The Highest Frontier (16 page)

She could get her homework done after dinner. “May Anouk Chouiref come too?”

Rafael made a slight bow. “Absolutely. I’ll drive by for you both at six.”

Anouk smiled. “Thanks,
chérie.
The Ferraris, they have at least some manners. I hear also that a new place is opening, with a Paris-trained chef, Café de la Paix. Next time, I’ll treat you there.”

*   *   *

At six, a black convertible glided silently up to the cottage. Wheels splayed out racing style, the chassis had road-hugging skirts and rear wings shiny as Abaynesh’s snake. Jenny came out wearing her moonholes and a Fifth-Avenue blouse. The car door waited for her to tuck her laces in by her feet before it slid shut.

Rafael wore a dark Euro-cut suit, fine woven wool. “Magnificent evening. You both look well; excellent adjustment to the spacehab.” He added, “Not to worry about the mosquitoes. Elephant Man will take care of it.” Beneath the car the path slid back without a sound save the crunch of gravel. The car glided south, into the river-ringed orange of the solar. Nothing manual, only brainstream.

“Nice wheels,” observed Jenny politely.

Rafael patted the door. “Solid anthrax. Superb air flow; we could drive upside down on a ceiling. Of course, its full force can’t be used here. I spent the summer at Valencia.”

Jenny thought, there were more useful ways a well-off
chico
could spend his summer, but then there were worse. A string melody arose, as if someone were playing a violin from within the car. A harpsichord joined in, and chorus, a Bach cantata.

Anouk’s residence was a geodesic dome with no apparent door or windows. A hexagonal panel flashed open and Anouk stepped out. She wore a shimmering gold lamé headscarf and a dress that wrapped her from neck to toe in a design of interlocked stars. Heads would turn, thought Jenny, wishing she herself dared dress like that.

As Anouk reached the back door, Berthe plodded behind her. Jenny cringed; she’d forgotten this embarrassment.

“A retainer,” observed Rafael approvingly. “Sign of a good family.” Both rear doors opened.

The car glided south past the Reagan Life and History buildings, and the students trailing their laces toward the dining hall, including Yola and Kendall with the slanball team. Jenny looked away, hoping they didn’t see her. At last the car slowed before the Ferrari club. The club house was top-grade amyloid marble with a porch of Ionic columns. Two angels with trumpets faced each other across the cornice. Rafael got out and came around to her side, although the doors opened themselves. Empty of passengers, the car drove itself forward onto a platform, which dipped down to an underground garage to pipe up microbial hydrogen.

On the porch a senior leaned against the column. “Rob LaSalle,” introduced Rafael. “Our club president.” The LaSalle family, industrial solarplate.

Rob smiled. “Just back from my weekly chat with Chase. Quite a day, with all the invasion.”

“Indeed. Does the college have a plan?”

“If Quade has his way.”

Rafael permitted himself a smile. “This way, Jenny.”

The dining room was fitted with near-authentic hardwood floors. The damask table linens had acanthus swirls. Anouk’s DIRG stepped back to the wall.

At the table, Rafael pulled out a chair for Anouk, and Rob pulled one out for Jenny. A menu scrolled down her toybox.

“Extensive, as you see,” observed Rafael. “Anything you’ll find in New York.”

In other words, amyloid. Jenny picked “veal parmigiana,” which wouldn’t be too bad; then just to see, she added “fresh asparagus,” which never printed out well.

Anouk asked, “What does one do here for the arts? Is there any … theater?”

“Our club has virtual seating at theaters throughout the world, from the Biltmore to the Opera Bastille.”

“And the finest symphonies,” added Rob. “Season virtuals at the Kennedy Center.”

The lip of a wineglass appeared in the table, then rose slowly, followed by the stem, just like the Monroe had risen out of Jenny’s printer. Rob tasted the wine, then nodded to Rafael.

“We hold our own social at the Mound,” Rafael told Jenny. “Monte Carlo Night—the week after classes start.
We
don’t preempt academics.” As their rival club presumably did. “We enjoy ourselves, while serving our country.” The Centrist ban on games of chance didn’t apply off Earth. “Do you play blackjack? Or the wheel?”

“Um…” She looked to Anouk.

“Blackjack,” said Anouk, with a gleam in her eye. “A game for tough players.” Apparently her rules didn’t either.

A fine glow suffused the table, while all around the light had gradually dimmed, revealing a pattern of stars. Constellations filled a night sky, above and below. It was as if their table floated, a planetoid amid the void. It left Jenny’s insides oddly unsettled.

Rob said, “We do service in Mount Gilead. Easter egg hunts for the children.”

“The children,” murmured Rafael. “So important; the future of our world.” He sent a clip of himself amidst children scampering with their Easter baskets.

The veal parmigiana was quite good. The asparagus tasted good as well, although no one could mistake its texture for true vegetable fiber. As she ate, Jenny felt her brain play tricks on her. Were these two
chicos
really amyloid as well; or perhaps hosts of a toyworld? “Children,” she repeated aloud. “I wonder what it’s like for children, growing up in a spacehab.”

Rob looked up, his fork suspended above his plate. “Frontera is fantastic for children. Free of crime, free of infectious disease. Only the best moral influences.”

“Would children of a spacehab ever dream of going out beyond? To Jupiter?”

A look passed between the two young men in their suits. Behind them the Great Bear was rising and turning around the pole star, as the heavens revolved around the table. “Humanity comes first,” Rob asserted. “Children deserve a world that revolves around them. Don’t you agree?”

“Perhaps they won’t believe in Earth either, if they’ve never been there.”

Rafael looked alarmed. “Of course not, that is not what we believe.”

Rob laughed, while catching Rafael’s arm as if to still him. “I heard a little boy say that last year at the egg hunt, ‘I don’t believe in Earth.’ A trip down the anthrax will cure that, I’m sure. Jenny, at this college no two of us agree on everything. Everything is up for discussion.”

“Indeed.” Anouk’s silken shoulders lifted in a delicate shrug. “Nothing in Frontera agrees with me.”

*   *   *

“You needn’t have been short with them,” Anouk told her afterward. “They were extremely nice.”

“Doesn’t it bother you, a mathematician, to be told that the universe revolves around your nose?”

“
Enfin,
they’re young; they’ll outgrow it.” She added pointedly, “My people are good astronomers. And evolution was discovered by al-Jahiz in the ninth century.”

“I have to do my homework now.” A DNA sequence, three Nobel-winning experiments, and the Northern Securities case.

“Of course,
chérie
. Let me know if you need help.” From Anouk’s window flashed a golden key. “This bit of code will write your DNA automatically.” She winked out.

Jenny went to open her toyroom. She would build the DNA herself, atom by atom, to make sure she understood before using Anouk’s shortcut.

“Open Life lab,” she told the toyroom.

To her surprise, one of the eight doorways in the tree house showed a stranger, a squat man in a green frock coat and top hat with a gold buckle, lounging against the trunk. “Top o’ the evening to you, miss. Surf’s up at Quake—won’t you try your luck?”

Jenny frowned. “Clear out.”

Instead of disappearing from the toyroom, as any dismissed visitor should, the green-clad apparition stepped forward and brushed her with a four-leaf clover. “Holy Trinity Special at Rapture.” The Mississippi spacehab, where Whitcomb played. “Say your prayers—it’s your lucky day.”

“I said,
clear out.
”

The man vanished, then reappeared in another door. “There’s the Lifeboat Special at Iceberg—luck o’ the Irish—”

Jenny called Toy Land. Layla Vimukta, the little Andaman girl, appeared in door number three, braids tossed over her shoulder. “Ooh, you’ve got a ghost. Been surfing the toys, have we?”

Jenny smiled sheepishly. “Not much.” The door chain to Jordi must have let something slip in. “Can’t you raise my protection? A friend of mine hacks my toybox.”

Layla put down her Phaistos disk. “Okay, but close your eyes and put your fingers in your ears. This will take just a teeny-weeny minute.”

Curious, Jenny half closed her eyes. In an instant the doors all went blank as if consumed by white flame. A thunderclap filled the toyroom. Jenny cried out and held her hands to her ears, her eyes now closed but still full of light. After what seemed forever, the light died and the forest bird calls returned. Cautiously, Jenny opened one eye, then another. The tree house had returned to normal, with only Layla standing in door three.

“Bye-bye ghost.” Layla waved cheerily.

12

After Wednesday morning slanball, Political Ideas was not till ten. With no early class, Jenny had time for a shower and a leisurely breakfast. The Ohioana stacked pancakes would not be bad, she thought, as she strolled north past the coneflowers. Just past Wickett Hall, there stood a small storefront she hadn’t noticed before. Out front, below the awning, a freshly painted sign read
CAFÉ DE LA PAIX
. A framed chalkboard stood on an easel, next to two small round tables with folding chairs. The chalk was real, a fine dust fallen onto the frame. Jenny sat on a chair and read the chalk letters.
Brioche—Café—Petit Dejeuner du Jour.

Out of the hut came a student in a white chef’s toque and jacket. It was Tom Yoder.

Startled, Jenny felt warm all over. She smiled and her eyes closed.

“Tinúviel,”
she heard him whisper.

Her eyes flew open.

Tom shook himself. “Excuse me,” he said. “Are you ready to order?”

“I’ll have the
‘du Jour.’
”

“You’re sure? You have time?” The price popped into her toybox, fifty dollars.

“Sure, I have time. I hear you have a Paris-trained chef.”

Tom said nothing but disappeared into the kitchen. On the maple tree, two squirrels chased each other up and down, and a cardinal sang at the top of its lungs. To the south, the light source brightened, round as the sun; and north, past the Mound, Lake Erie lit up blue before the chocolate peaks. By eight o’clock, a few students straggled down the trail to the dining hall or to class.

At length Tom returned with a tray. Belgian waffles formed a crisscross star pattern, their crust topped with powdered sugar and fresh strawberries indented with real seeds. On the Limoges china plate, a butter pat was molded in the shape of a frog. A boiled egg in a cup, its shell sketched with a rose. A cup of
chocolat
with a cinnamon stick. A pink grapefruit carved as a swan.
“Citrus paradisi,
red grapefruit.
”
The grapefruit looked and smelled so fresh it activated her taxa link, the cut pulp swollen full beneath the swan’s wings.

Jenny ate the waffles first, thinking she would hate to break open the painted egg. She chewed slowly, the crust and strawberries melting in her mouth.

“Is everything all right?” Tom asked, stepping outside the door.

She nodded. “Did you … make these?”

Tom nodded. “The ingredients were all shipped up this morning. Except the eggs, those are from Mount Gilead.”

She did not want him to leave. “The swan looks so real.”

“Thank you. Was the egg not done as you wished?”

“I don’t want to break the rose.”

“Never mind, I’ll make you a blown one.”

Her pulse raced. “Why don’t you sit down?”

Tom cast about, as if checking for other customers. He pulled over a chair backward and sat on it, legs to either side, and crossed his arms upon the back. He had light brown hair, with the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. “How’d you like our class?”

“Life?” Her lip twisted. “I’ll never forget those phosphates. Did you get the homework?”

“Yes. I need to check which carbon ends with the phosphate.”

“Always the five-prime carbon. The other end stays free to grow more DNA.” She opened the egg, trying to leave the rose intact. “What else are you taking?”

“Flynn’s Renaissance Art. We’ll get to make our own frescoes.”

“That’s amazing. I sure wanted that class.”

Tom thought this over. “I could drop out, and then you could get in.”

She looked up, puzzled.

“Sorry.” He shook himself. “That wouldn’t work, would it.”

“Anyhow, I have Uncle Dylan’s seminar. He’s
chulo.
”

“‘Uncle Dylan’?”

“President Chase. He’s a family friend.”

“I see, of course.”

“Could we be playmates?”

“Sure, thanks.” Tom’s window moved to her playmate group, along with Anouk, Tusker-12, and a Chinese student who’d just posted the molecule of the day. Two hundred comments already.

“So, you’re French?” Jenny asked.

“Nope. I was born Amish and grew up near Danville.”

Amish. Inbred, genetically challenged. Her view of Tom blew up in the air and came down in fragments that had to be pieced together. He certainly looked healthy enough, though he could use more of a tan. He’d asked a good question in class. She hoped her expression had not changed. “Well, I think I’ll come here for breakfast every day.”

“I’m open just three days a week, that’s all I have time for.”

“I see.” Supplementing his scholarship. He’d have no Newman genes, though somehow he felt more like Newman than those who did. “What are you doing Saturday?”

“The Homefair blitzbuild, then cooking for Saturday night.”

“Homefair, that’s nice. I guess being Amish, you know all about building.”

Tom withdrew, looking away as if she’d said something wrong. “I never built a house.” He got up and disappeared inside the café.

*   *   *

For Political Ideas, they had to print out a book, Aristotle’s
Politics.
Jenny tried to remember the last time she’d printed one out, instead of scrolling in her box. The pages came apart like puff pastry, and the black lines of text undulated like the surface of the sea. The content had little to do with the politics she knew, the trading of votes and promises.