The Highest Frontier (3 page)

“Even the greenhouse.”

“I’m not worried, Mama.” Jenny turned her orchid around, making sure it was not crushed in the bag. She hoped the gas exchange was working. “You’re sure about the greenhouse?” The dean of students had promised.

“With sprinklers and barometric control. Right above your room.” Soledad Kennedy always made sure. “And your new
compañera de casa
is a person of quality.”

“
Sí,
Mama, my housemate is fine.” Her parents would have paid for a single unit, with her own kitchen and private pool. Needing a housemate was so uncool, like your parents had produced children at random instead of culturing twins. But the mental said she needed a companion.
Qué lata
having a mental in your toybox. Anyway, Jenny’s
compañera
looked sweet; she’d posted her violin recital and her Hun School slanball team.

“Don’t spend all your time in the laboratory.” Her mother patted her knee. “Get out to know people—you represent our family.” Two presidential families, and Jenny could barely talk. Her mother raised a finger. “Be gracious, remember, even to the uncultured.”

“Sí, claro.”
At Somers High she knew kids born of random sperm and egg. No nose ring, crooked teeth, they’d be blind by age thirty. No twins, the smart family choice for a mother on the go.

“Church every Sunday—
no te olvides
.” Today, of course, they’d attended service via Toynet.

“I’ll see Father Clare.” The college chaplain, Clarence Flynn, was an old family friend, someone she could speak to without freezing up.

“And community service.”

“I’ll join EMS.” First responder; the one kind of publicity she was good at.

“And visit the Mound every quarter.”

Jenny sighed. President Ramos had made the tax system voluntary, but her mother insisted on her playing the “recommended” stake. A Ramos had to play in public, not at the toybox feather like most people. “If I could just blink a fee.”

“You need to be seen,
hijita.
You know what they’ll say—‘the Ramos Kennedys don’t play taxes.’” She tugged Jenny’s blouse straight. “Be nice to your aunts when they call.” California governor Meg Akeda and her twin Elsa were actually Soledad’s cousins, all granddaughters of President Schwarz. But Meg and El were Centrists; they’d gone gold, Firmament and all. Childless, they treated Jenny like their own niece. “And remember, green jello for Utah.” Florida oranges, Wisconsin cheddar, Cuban
plátanos,
always something for a swing state. “At the debate,
recuerdas
?”

The First Lady debate was that evening. Soledad had arranged it through ToyDebate, of which she was the Unity cochair. The first and most important, the First Lady debate drew excitement during the post-primary lull. The least predictable, it could well seal the fate of the campaign. And this election could seal the fate of Earth: Would Earth’s final melt be curbed, or not?

“At the break, Clive will do your first-day-at-college. Remember—Anna needs our help.” Anna Carrillo, the governor of Utah, was the Unity candidate for president. Soledad’s ambivalent tone signaled that Carrillo’s rise to power had come out of nowhere, no family pedigree, but there she was, the Unity choice. It was hard enough holding Unity’s old two wings together. And Unity agreed on this: Halt solar on Earth, and build in space.

“
Sí, Mama,
I’ll remember.” Jenny had her toybox ready, wherever she found herself that evening at seven.

“
Look, Jenny.”
Across her toybox sailed red letters from her father, by her side. Red meant something interesting.
“11A, 11B.”

Jenny twisted her head back just far enough to glimpse row eleven.
“Rick Tsien”
and
“Reese Tsien”
flashed the windows in her toybox. Cute
chico
and
chica,
they were cultured “Paul Newman,” the trademark nose and dimpled chin. Half the twins Jenny’s year were Newman, with variations; these two had black hair and green eyes. The
chico
wore double-X earrings and a beaded headband, while the
chica
had a heart-shaped diad. Both wore gene-health nose rings. Jenny blinked their windows, and their images leapt out in jerseys, scoring at slanball. New students together, like she and Jordi would have been. Her mouth twitched with the ghost of a smile.
“Yes, Dad, twins.”
She patted her father’s knee.

“Illyrian twins.”
Unlike Jordi and Jenny, these twins looked alike. The pair was identical, except for a male gene on one X; the economical way to culture twins. George loved anything near-identical. His wrist wore two watches, Earth time and Lunar. His fingers flexed together as if playing cat’s cradle, actually still managing Toynet thirty thousand kilometers away.

“Hi there, Jenny.”
Toytext from Rick Tsien, the cute slanball twin in eleven-A.
“Can I help you set up your room?”

His sister Reese turned with a Newman smile.
“Jenny, how
chulo
—our mom knows your aunt, the governor.”
The California governor was Jenny’s Aunt Meg, with her infamous twin Aunt El. Strangers always found some connection.
“The Begonia Garden Club—did you get
your
invite?”
Frontera’s social clubs were banned from rushing before the start of class, but the Begonia Club had been sending Jenny flowers for the past month.

Jenny’s eyes fluttered shut, then opened.
“I raise orchids. Do you like chemistry?”
The line effectively screened her ten thousand would-be playmates.

In her toybox the purple capsule loomed large, and a long cone of shuttle lines stretched to the lift. The capsule looked oddly out of place, like Old Bet atop her pedestal. A new window opened, the Frontera College crest in purple and gold: the Ohio River crossed by a colonial ax, with the ancient Greek motto
Sophias philai paromen,
“Friends of wisdom, we are here.” Above the motto, a little boy rode a rocking horse. The boy would be Gil Wickett, whose Toynet fortune had founded the college.

The crest dissolved to the motherly smiling face of the dean of students, Nora Kwon. “Jenny,” said Dean Kwon, “we have important news for you.” Kwon had a take-charge voice, like the Somers High slanball coach. But what news could be too important to await her arrival? “You have a new housemate.”

A new
compañera
? Whatever became of the Hun School
chica
? She must have got off the wait list to Williams.

“I’m delighted to introduce your housemate, Mary Dyer, of Long Beach.…” Long Beach, where Rosa Schwarz had grown up watching the ocean’s liquid jaws chewing ever higher up the shore until it swallowed half of downtown L.A.

In the box appeared Mary Dyer, a
chica
of average height and medium brown hair. A Newman chin, otherwise nothing special. But the ring in Mary’s left nostril meant her genes were cultured. Her eyes and nose fit just right, though her broad jaw gave her a boyish look. Her tan looked as if she’d spent time at the beach, but not too much. Her face shone with skinglow, stylish but not ostentatious, and she held a water bottle. Not too plump and not too thin, wearing a tie-dyed shift, not too long and not too short.

Soledad leaned over, and Jenny blinked to share her toybox. “Nora,” her mother asked, “which school is Mary from? What family?”

“Her home slid down Ocean View five years ago. Her family didn’t make it out.” The dean added in a whisper, “They left her a fortune in pearls.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Mary was a late applicant,” Dean Kwon added. “Jenny, FERPA rules mandate privacy, but Mary asks me to share with you two things: That she is a highly creative and imaginative young lady; and that she has a mild condition in the autism spectrum.”

“Sure, Dean Kwon. I understand.” An Aspie, Mary was socially challenged, like Jenny’s father.

Soledad nodded knowingly. “Mary must have exceptional talents.”

The dean’s eyes grinned. “Soli, I knew you’d understand. Jenny, we’re honored to have you at Frontera; let us know of anything we can do. Your mother knows you’re in the best hands.” Soledad served on Frontera’s Board of Trustees. The president was her friend from college.

“Be sure to take your HIV.”
More text from her father, blue because he was going to miss her.

“Yes, Dad, I will.”
HIV was “human improvement vector,” the original AIDS virus tamed to guard her health. Back in Somers, HIV made her genes fight cancer and cataracts. At Frontera, it would tune her cochlea for the spacehab rotation.

“And return to Iroquoia.”
His beloved toyworld, which he’d built in childhood and run ever since.

Jenny patted his arm.
“Of course, Dad, we’ll meet in the longhouse.”
Family and coworkers often played along with him.

A sudden tug as the anthrax engaged. War whoops broke out from the feathered taxplayers. The spacehab’s centrifugal “gravity” seeped in like the descent of a Ferris wheel. Students and taxplayers unsteadily extracted themselves from their seats; those who hadn’t yet used their sickness bag now did, souring the air. Jenny held Blood Star tight and whispered the Lord’s Prayer. Her parents reached for the remaining orchids. Jenny looked ahead for Jordi, who always led the way.

She froze; it was months since she’d done that. Perhaps she needed the mental after all.

3

The terminal opened into a windowless gray hall. The air smelled stuffy as if underground. It was buried within the hull of the spacehab, enclosed by the outer layer of sun-soaking purple microbes that made amyloid and hydrogen fuel. “Above,” from the gravitational viewpoint, lay the interior where people farmed, studied, and played their taxes. A sign,
QUARANTINE,
was flanked by two DIRGs in coonskin caps. “Daniel Boone” frontier DIRGs.
Qué lata
; Frontera was supposed to be free of DIRGs. Hopefully after quarantine that would be the last of them. Ahead, someone’s father tripped and fell, and his ten-kilo box split open strewing R-patches, a shaving kit, and a toydog that turned on and sniffed around expectantly. Jenny took a deep breath and lifted one foot, then the other, as she always did arriving at Towers for slanball; the local “grav” was never quite Earth standard.

The passengers spread out among three lines. The first line was mostly colonists a head shorter than she, their arms and legs ringed by power bands to glean energy from taking a step or raising an arm. Colonists headed for Mount Gilead; their line faced the poster of a cross, proclaiming
TO THE FIRMAMENT—AND BEYOND.
In the next line over, taxplayers were already blinking bets ahead to the Mound. Their poster showed Lady Godiva riding nude to save the poor folk their taxes.

Jenny joined students and parents in the third line,
FRONTERA COLLEGE PREORIENTATION
. A faded poster proclaimed the college’s tenth anniversary campaign. Students didn’t wear power bands; their power came from the college, unrationed. In her toybox a form opened, ten pages of waivers in fine print, the undersigned to acknowledge the experimental nature of the space habitat; that space debris puncture, solar flare blackouts, fire and asphyxiation, substratum overflow, food and water shortages, cosmic ray exposure, animal attacks, and infections of Ebola, hepatitis Q, and brucellosis were all potential mishaps of college life on the high frontier.

“Quarantine.” The flat voice emanated from a coon-capped DIRG. The DIRG pointed to her orchids. A cart wheeled over. Jenny bit her lip as the three bagged plants disappeared inside.

The DIRG pointed right to the next line. “Bodyscan.”

As Jenny moved on with her parents for their bodyscans, Dean Kwon reappeared in her toybox. “How’s it going, Jenny? I know preorientation is
un lío,
but you’ll get through.”

Soledad nodded. “No problem.” The dean must have connected her too.

Jenny caught her breath. “They took my orchids.”

Dean Kwon nodded. “Don’t you worry, Jenny, Professor Abaynesh will get them back to you next week.”

Abaynesh was the botanist who had promised Jenny a greenhouse and a spot in her lab. But a week? Jenny felt lost without her orchids. She blinked at her toybox to call the professor, but got no response.

“This is how we keep the hab clean,” explained the dean. “No kudzu, no dengue fever, no mosquitoes.”

Mosquitoes she could do without, Jenny agreed, though she’d miss the kudzu back home.

“ToyNews Ohio.” In her toybox a new window had appeared, upper right from the dean’s. Ohio news, for Frontera’s legal home state. “President Bud Guzmán visits Columbus, and tells members of a returning reserve unit, ‘You’re doing a heck of a job defending Antarctica.’ Cincinnati relocates another twenty thousand families to the northeast, well outside the Death Belt. Don’t miss Canton’s Olde Tyme Python Festival and church supper, all the python you can eat.”

Dean Kwon appeared in her window. “Read the FERPA rules and discuss with your parents.” FERPA, the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, forbade a college to disclose student information to anyone other than the student—even grades to a parent—unless the student blinked permission. Kwon gave a cheerful wave. “I’ll see you up here soon, with all the frogs at Wickett Hall.”

“Hop, Jenny, hop.”
Her father grinned slightly.

Jenny smiled indulgently at her dad’s joke, and wondered why new students were “frogs.”

“Those monster frogs in our trees,” recalled her mother, “they eat squirrels. We had them too in Havana.”

A long stairway “rose” inward through the substratum, toward the spacehab interior. A bright hole opened, pale green. A fresh breeze lifted Jenny’s hair, with a scent of pines. At last she emerged, blinking in the light. Pine trees appeared at regular intervals, individual spikes with space in between; naked without their blanket of kudzu. The naked pines curved up, around, and above, like pegs on the inside of a giant carpet roll. Songbirds warbled, just like a toyworld. Jenny looked for a cage, but the birds just perched out there in the tree, ready to fly away. Their wings flashed yellow, red, and black, like buttons in her toybox.