The Highest Frontier (21 page)

Silence lengthened. Dylan held Clare’s hand. “Why did we make him hetero?”

“It was your idea,” said Clare. “Greater mate choice, you said.”

Dylan winced. “He doesn’t appreciate it. He thinks love is … disposable.”

“At least he’ll never have to go through what I did.” Abdominal implantation.

“Was it so bad, the Swedish clinic? Nine months on your back, the pool every day, the masseur, the chanterelles?”

“The preboiled potatoes—the memory still makes me sick.”

“Groundhogs,” muttered Dylan, shaking his head over his son. “What’ll he be saving next? Mosquitoes?”

Clare looked up. “What’s the latest? Any help from Life?”

“From chemistry.” An estimate had already come through his toybox. He didn’t like the total. “I’m out to Gil’s in the morning, to spring a few million for smartspray.”

*   *   *

Early Friday morning, on his way out to the anthrax, Dylan paused at the door. Clare came over and grasped both sides of his jacket. Dylan took a deep breath, feeling light-headed. Clare eyed Dylan’s tie, the one with the alphabet blocks, a tricycle, and a mallet with colored pegs. “Heading down to Gil’s?”

He nodded.

“A big ask?”

“I wish.” Dylan loved fundraising; to connect earnest donors’ assets with the dreams of highly talented students was his greatest satisfaction. But just to kill bugs—what a waste.

Clare thought a moment. “Have a safe trip. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Something in the way he said it made Dylan blink rapidly. “Of course not, sweet. God forbid.” A long kiss.

The space lift left on time, but it stalled halfway down to Earth; one of its anthrax cords got clipped by debris, and they had to wait for Anthradyne to slide in another, always in reserve. After a two-hour delay, at last he got below, to find Gil’s solar shuttle waiting. The shuttle streaked down to Ohio, above the brown windswept plain just a hundred miles north of the Death Belt.

The Toynet Corporation Headquarters stood outside Dayton, not far from where the Wright brothers first played with bikes and kites. The headquarters took the shape of a gigantic alphabet block, the letter A, of course, and the number 1. Well-watered lawns surrounded the colossal cube, though they could not escape the tumbleweeds blowing in.

As the shuttle landed, a transfer car came up to dock. The shuttle door opened, but the car’s snout came forward just too late to engage. Through the door came an oven blast of outdoor air. The blast caught Dylan in the face. His lungs choked, and his eyes streamed. For a moment he was back in the charcoal desert of his Ohio childhood.

“Excuse the error,” apologized the shuttle. The door engaged the car, restoring conditioned air.

Catching his breath, Dylan wiped his eyes and stepped into the car. The air cleared; he took a deep breath, as the car sped into Toynet Headquarters through the base of the A.

Outside the office of Chief Executive Officer Guillermo Wickett, Dylan paused to adjust his tie. The doorway shimmered, then the entire wall evaporated. A carpet of amyloid grass with a swing set, and a large soft-fleshed man of boyish proportions riding a rocking horse, the one that adorned the college crest. “Dillie!” The man waved so hard he nearly fell off. He dismounted and hurried forward, pumping his arms vigorously. “
Mucho gusto
. Can we do the Lunar again? Please?”

Dylan laughed, with his best donor-greeting smile. “Someday soon, Gil. Today—”

Around the room tooted the famous toy train, snaking through villages and tunneling through amyloid mountains. “How is good old Clare?” Gil asked. “When
are
you coming out to Lila’s Beach?”

“Very soon, I hope.” If only Clare would go; what a treat that would be.

“And how’s your good school, all the
chicos
and
chicas
?” Gil rubbed his hands together. “Such a wonderful school. If only it existed back then, I would have gone there.” Gil had quit primary school to found Toynet. His eyes darted back and forth, no doubt answering all his windows.

Dylan patted Gil’s shoulder. “Frontera is thriving,” he assured him. “All the
chicos
and
chicas
are well. Your little world in the sky has bloomed in ways no one could have imagined.”

“It’s too fun.” Gil rubbed his hands together. “I ‘visit’ all the time, you know—without telling.”

“But this insect problem—” Dylan shook his head. “It could be the death of us, Gil.”

Gil waved a hand as if batting a fly. “Don’t sound like my auditor. Frontera,” he sighed dreamily, his fantasy come true. “If only I were born there. Well, come, Dillie, let’s talk about your problem.” Turning toward the back of the room, he climbed into the sandbox and picked up a shovel. With the shovel he carefully adjusted the texture of an Egyptian pyramid in the desert. The pyramid had a tunnel carved through, for a train engine and caboose.

Dylan recalled Clare saying, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Of course, Clare would not hesitate; he’d jump right in the sandbox and sketch the Mona Lisa with his finger. With a smile, Dylan stepped in, knowing the routine. The smartsand would not bother his suit; or if it did, the suit was disposable. He took up a handful and idly started shaping an elephant’s head and trunk, the smartsand fading in rainbow hues. Then he thought better of it, hurriedly shaping a maple tree instead.

“What to do,” muttered Gil. “Are the bugs so bad? Why not re-form your hab as a desert? No mosquitoes then.”

“Trees and grass,” Dylan rejoined apologetically. “The parents, you know. They like green.”

Gil looked up. “Trains don’t need grass. I just installed an 1880 Baldwin steam engine on my track! A joy to ride—you must come out and see.”

Dylan grinned. “Dee-lighted, Gil, I’d love to ride your train. As soon as this insect problem is off my mind—I value your judgment, you know I do.”

Gil’s shovel paused above the pyramid. His eyes darted back and forth, scanning his toybox. “Those Super-X flies—no mate with males, no more flies. What a neat scheme.”

“Ingenious,” admitted Dylan. “But we really need to avoid generations—”

“And bats to prey on them.” Gil shook his hand in the air, an excellent imitation of a bat in flight.

“Gil, we need to wipe out the mocs now, before campus visit season. Orin’s identified a highly effective smartspray, which only targets mosquitoes. They use it on golf courses.”

“Are you sure, Dillie?”

“Seguro.”

Gil sighed. “I suppose you’re right. Well, here you go.”

In Dylan’s toybox a window flashed a ten-million-dollar credit. “Thanks
so
much, Gil; I can’t tell you how much this means for Frontera.”

Gil rose to his feet. “Can we ride the Lunar now?”

Dylan rose and stretched his legs, brushing the smartsand off his suit. “The train,” he corrected. “Sure, let’s go.”

“Oh, but the Lunar Circuit—Dillie, you promised.”

“Someday,” he emphasized. “I promised Clare I’d be home for supper.”

“Oh,
Dillie.
Your new Anthradyne is just too
chulo
. And the way you handled the Tycho pin curve—what a finish.”

Dylan bit his inner lip. Actually he’d promised Clare that he’d quit racing for good, after the crackup in Mare Crisium. “Gil, let’s chat about this again real soon.”

“The frog seminars,” announced Gil. “You said you’d need three positions.”

Startled, Dylan looked up at Gil’s innocent face. Seminar courses reserved for frogs were Dylan’s most cherished priority for the curriculum. But he had only just broached the idea in Senior Staff, and consulted the chairs of Spanish and History. Helen said the faculty would need six new positions to offer live seminars for every first-year student, but Orin had shown that three would do.

“Three endowed chairs.” How did Gil know—of course, he “visited” through Dylan’s toybox, Dylan indulged him that way. “But it’s not been approved. The faculty has yet to—”

“You can have the three chairs, after the Lunar Circuit.”

Dylan had planned to ask for the chairs next spring, but now his plan was preempted. If he declined now, he could hardly come ask again.

16

Stunned by her mediocre grade, Jenny trudged home. Other students had actually got Bs—the grade Somers High gave “sit-ins,” delinquents who sat in study hall just to keep their public funding. Anouk claimed the Life professor never gave frogs more than A.

Back outside Jenny’s cottage, the old bear gouge was still collecting water. A few feet away, a new depression had opened, a dead lizard floating in the murk. It smelled like sewage.

In her toybox she called for Maintenance. As she waited, the tumor mouse from Levi-Montalcini crept about her box, sniffing like a toypet. At last Travis Tharp appeared in her window.

“Dean Kwon promised to fix the leak,” Jenny reminded him.

“We did fix it,” Tharp assured her. “Did it fill again?” He smiled and gave a wink. “Don’t you fret; I’ll be over for a look.”

In her greenhouse, the vanda had already put out new leaves, glistening with drops of moisture from the spray. And three new blossoms had opened, five purple petals outstretched like fingers, each central column pointing upward. Surprised, Jenny looked closer. In just six days since Abaynesh took her plants, the main stalks had grown the length of her hand. How could an orchid grow so fast? Blood Star, too, had grown maybe six months’ worth. She already had to divide and repot it. She’d never seen anything like it, not even in the orchid growers’ toyworld. She’d have to ask that professor, with her two-headed snakes and innervated plants.

The Café de la Paix was closed until Saturday night, as Tom had to do his homework. Jenny was torn between going to the dining center, where Tom went, though the amyloid all tasted the same; or the Ohioana where the slanball team and Anouk went. The dining center was a big
gazpacho
; would she ever find him there? Homefair, Saturday morning; he said he’d be there.

At the Ohioana, the students all celebrated their first Friday. There were mugs of beer all round, except for the slanball team and Anouk. Charlie was thrilled with success. “That Life toyworld was
chulo
. I hope we have more classes like that.”

Anouk wrinkled her nose. “Those knights—they were
Crusaders
. How dare that professor mock Europe’s foremost religion.”

Kendall exchanged a look with Yola. “The Arabs got their revenge,” he told Anouk. “They invented math.”

Yola punched him.

“Well,” observed Anouk, somewhat mollified, “that happens to be true.” She turned to Jenny. “I heard today from Dr. Valadkhani at Toy Land. She invited me to assist teaching her class on Developmental Arithmetic.”

Jenny pushed with her fork at the gravy she had specifically asked the server to omit. In her toybox popped Viv, from the Begonia Garden Club. “Just a reminder, Jenny: We can’t wait to see you at our Sunday afternoon social in the club conservatory.”

“The college is going to spray.” Yola was outraged. “Spray the whole hab, just for those poor mosquitoes.” Flipping her braids, she glared up at the antlered deer head, as if it were President Chase.

Jenny itched just thinking of the mosquitoes.

David Pezarkar took another bite of meatloaf. “They say the spray’s very specific to mosquitoes. Smartspray.”

Kendall frowned. “It’s the principle,” he insisted. “Humans should never use our higher powers to wipe out an entire population of another species. It’s species cleansing.”

“Species cleansing,” agreed his sister. “First, the mosquitoes; next, who knows what? Bears? Poison frogs?” Yola nodded decisively. “We’re organizing a protest. Who’s in?”

About half the team raised their hand, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Jenny stared at her plate, suddenly very interested in the gravy.

“ToyNews Ohio.” The large-necked state news man again. “Several Ohio House races are in play this year. Contesting the eighth district, we hear from both candidates.”

The Unity candidate: “Poverty is the number one issue in our district. My opponent will cut our community gene clinics, while sending more troops to Antarctica. ‘Cut and pray,’ the Centrist way.”

The Centrist: “Depravity is our number one issue, the decline in moral values. My opponent will legalize zoophily and put Win Now in your toybox. I will never vote for any game of chance on Ohio soil.” Only off-world. “‘Game and spend,’ that’s Unity.”

*   *   *

The solar filter’s last scarlet rays tinted her cottage pink. The bear gouge now held a green amyloid tube snaking up, only to bend down again plunging deep into the soil. The second puddle, too, had sprouted a tube that snaked up, around, and down. The green tubes faced each other like some kind of modern art form.

Nearby stood Travis Tharp, chin in hand, surveying his handiwork. “It’s just a temporary fix,” he promised. “Don’t you worry, miss; it’ll hold real good.”

Jenny frowned. “Why can’t you just replace the water line?”

“It’s not that kind of leak. Not the line to your house, that’s fine.”

“Then what is it?”

Adjusting a power band on his leg, Tharp looked reflectively at the tubes. “When they first built the hab, the main bulk of substratum was designed to be just a tad less dense than the seawater in the outer shell, where the purple solar microbes grow. Well, they underestimated the compression by centrifugal force. Within a year or two, the substratum settled in a tad denser than water. So the water tends to seep upward, through a crack here and there. Of course it’s always filtered clean by the time it gets here.”

Jenny’s mouth fell open. “The water from the outer shell? You mean, the microbial saline?” She blinked. “It … seeps up? All the time?”

“Very slowly. It always gets pumped back down. Pumps are all over, throughout the hab, like a sump pump in your basement. No problem, really.”

“What if the pumps stopped?”

“Well, now. If the pumps were to stop, eventually the whole hab would have a mess of water to clear out, maybe two meters deep.”

*   *   *

For a while Jenny could only stare in numb silence, alone except for the tumor mouse in her toybox. The last rays of light died, closed by the filter, while the lights of Mount Gilead came on, a central cross-grid with streets outlined in dotted constellations. Not as advertised, Anouk would say. Frontera was no Old Bet perched safe atop a post. Frontera was a new bet, and not a good one. An over-engineered disaster waiting to happen.