The Highest Frontier (37 page)

As soon as Jenny emerged from the cage, ToyNews windows lit up scrolling all the news she’d missed, including the day’s big story, the inevitable Homeworld assault on Great Salt Lake. The ultras could never be wiped for good, of course. But the fed had sent in scores of drones to blast the invading cells into oblivion. For hours the lake was aflame, obliterating all the biofilm towers and strange new stalks and crawling things that had emerged.

After the strike, the lake was a flat sea of mud, not an ultra in sight. Outside in the suburbs, the populace had been issued cyanide masks, and there were no human casualties. But the wildlife was a different story. Pelicans, phaleropes, and sandpipers lay limp, strewn haphazardly around the beach. Even a bald eagle lay stricken, head buried in the sand. And of course, unseen in the brush, the newer forms of ultra rooted, slithered, or crept forth flexing their limblike appendages. Some had a head and four limbs—“mandrakes,” the media called them. What next from this puzzling quasispecies?

In other news, the Creep had dropped out of sight again. A White House source put out he was planning some new drive for Antarctica. Still, the vice president’s disappearance was surprising so late in the campaign. And President Bud Guzmán had scheduled a special address to the nation for Monday morning, on a new project called “Farmland Security.” Timed no doubt to blunt the impact of Unity’s convention opening. As for Jenny, the “Mutant speech” meme was still spreading.

To celebrate their win, the Kearns-Clark parents treated the whole team to a barbecue down by the Ohio River, complete with Gandalf-style fireworks. The Kearns-Clarks were a garrulous pair of old-time Quakers who regaled the team with their long-ago adventures in Africa raising goats for Heifer International. No sign of why Ken and Yola had a problem with them. If only Tom could have come; but Jenny kept his window open, and promised to stop by later for dessert. She thought a moment, then blinked the option, “Brainkiss enabled.”

Fran squeezed Jenny’s arm. “Great start, frog.”

Everyone shouted or thumped her on the back, with no specific reference to what she’d done. Ken kept quiet, coping with liveplast pulsing across his chest and several other places.

“Sure you belong here?” Jenny smiled. “I’ll scope you, just to check.”

He grimaced. “What a shame you and sis got suspended,” he muttered. “Why should you waste your nights on plastered bros when there’s a game?”

Yola shrugged. “Like Coach said, we can use a couple days to catch up on work. Jenny, there’s a public cage up there south of Mount Gilead. We can do fundamentals; keep in shape.”

*   *   *

When Jenny finally got to the café, the dining room was dark, the chairs put up; it was not the café’s regular night for business. The only light was in the kitchen, where Tom sat on a stool waiting with chocolate mousse in a parfait glass.

“Thanks.” Jenny enjoyed the treat, despite how full she was. She called up a Paris street in her toybox.

“Congratulations,” said Tom.

“Shh,” she whispered. “You never know. Rapture’s Angels might have their own Anouk.”

“But a
Christian.
” They shared a good laugh. In his hand Tom held a string of plastic pop beads, which he ran through his fingers. Jenny watched, curious.

“A memento,” he said. “The beads were the last thing I put in my pocket before I left home. Amish kids play with them.”

“Really.” Jenny thought of Wickett Hall with all the famous toys marching around, the rocking horse, the jack-in-the-box, the choo-choo train.

“What was your favorite toy?”

“A magic set,” she remembered. “A coin and a card, and a bit of string. And the shell game—the cups and balls. It’s amazing how you can make people see one thing when really it’s another.”

Tom nodded. “Amazing—and scary.”

“Claro.”
Jenny licked her fork. “What was yours?”

He stretched and put his hands behind his head. “A printer carton. A huge one, the kind your all-purpose food-to-furniture printer comes in. My sister brought it home from a Dumpster. It was everything—a house, a car, a spaceship.”

Jenny nodded. “Like the kind I kept the ultra in, in our cellar.” She wondered whether Tom’s sister was still alive. “I didn’t think of Jordi for a whole day. Not till I saw Ken out there in the cage.”

“Last night I didn’t dream of my sister—for two whole nights. In college our eyeballs are just so crammed with everything.”

She said with a rush, “So what do you think about Father Clare running for mayor? Should we help him campaign? I was going to ask him, but I missed church today.”

“I asked. He said his campaign is run by the Bulls.”

They shared a bemused stare.

“The Bulls aren’t so bad,” said Tom. “Not in the daytime.”

She sighed. “I know, I’ve worked with worse.” Any campaign drew a mixed crowd. “Well, thanks for the treat but I have homework.”

And the dreaded convention speech Monday afternoon. And plant lab, all mixed up with the business of Mary; weights all crashing down on her shoulders.

“I’ll walk you home.”

They strolled hand in hand down Buckeye Trail, fireflies winking in the dark, and the clustered lights of Mount Gilead above. “Did you get the molecule of the day?” asked Tom. “It’s something aromatic, but I can’t sort out the shifts.”

“That’s one of about a hundred links I’ve not recovered yet.” Meanwhile so many playmates were sending “tips” for her speech that the box nearly crashed again.

The link popped open, as Tom sent it over.

“Iridodial, the insect hormone,” she told him. “Those two ketones are distinctive.”

As they reached her new cottage, now a single, Jenny’s steps slowed. His face looked perfect, every eyelash and strand of hair. Her lips touched his. She held him close, and he felt so good.

Tom pulled back, with a gasp. “We have homework, okay?”

“See you in class.”

29

Monday morning, instead of slanball, Jenny was up working on her “speech.” Overnight she’d accumulated about a thousand more “tips” from her playmates. Her eyes skimmed them down.

“Read them my position paper on getting to Jupiter in ten years.”
A well-meaning family friend at NASA.

“Your first speech, Jenny!”
Her Somers teammate.
“
No tengas miedo
—Show ’em your tusks!”

“Do the math!”
From Anouk, now busy tutoring the toymaker’s Developmental Arithmetic.
“Please tell these Americans to learn some math!”

“Are you saved by the Lord?”
An anonymous ghost.
“Will you be joining your brother in Heaven?”

She closed all her windows except her parents and teachers, and Tom and Anouk. Anouk was doing better, and closing off would only tempt her. Her box quiet, she kept her eyes open through Aristotle class, and her head down at lunch. This speech would get over, then
nunca más
.

The Unity Party Convention would run for two days, followed immediately by the Centrists. What had once been two full-week conventions had collapsed over the years into less than a week, as each party tried earlier to upstage the other. Given the preordained content of both, Jenny could hardly imagine how they’d ever managed to fill more time.

Jenny’s speech was timed for one thirty, in between Anna Carrillo’s old high school debate coach and the attorney general of Utah. At one fifteen, Clive appeared in Jenny’s toyroom. “They’re running just ten minutes behind,” Clive told her. “Anna runs a tight ship,” he added confidentially, as if she didn’t know that. An assistant straightened his collar, and another whispered something in his ear, while two others fussed about his hair. ToyNet could fix everything, but the convention was a big deal for Clive; he’d leave nothing to chance. “I’ve seen your advance draft, Jenny,” he confided, referring to the text the handlers had given her. “It’s
chulo.
” Trying to sound like a student.

Jenny swallowed. A moment of fright; would she really go through with it? What if she really hurt Anna’s chances? Nonsense, she’d be just one of a hundred five-minute speakers, most of them droning attorneys. She straightened and stood an inch taller. Clive adjusted his virtual height to match. Jenny texted,
“That’s not my speech.”

Clive’s eyes flew open. “Excuse me? Do I have the latest text?” He streamed her a copy.

It occurred to her, he could cut her off if she spooked him too much. A technical glitch, or whatever.
“There was some revision.”

“A change? An authorized change?” The word “authorized” had an urgent tone.

“Authorized by me.”

Clive nodded. “ToyNews—From our box to yours.”

Jenny watched the countdown in her box, and reviewed her text. She timed it out, the letters to scroll one by one for just ten minutes. She barely heard her own name announced. Just in time, she remembered to smile.

“I would like to thank the Unity organizers, especially the party chair, for the invitation to speak on behalf of our party nominee, Anna Carrillo.”
Black letters marched across the white page, then scrolled slowly up.
“I have never done a speech before, because of a condition that I share with many ordinary Americans: I lack the ability to speak in public. So you will have to read my speech in text. At least with the text before you, I can’t ever claim it was a slip of the lip.

“Supporting Anna is a pleasure because she will help ordinary Americans. When a pair of socks costs you fifty dollars, ordinary Americans need help. And beyond the price of socks—Anna will start cleaning up this planet, beginning with the Dead Zone.”
The handlers had crossed out any reference to the Dead Zone, for fear of alienating Southern voters.
“In America, the Dead Zone covers part of twenty-one states, and continues to expand. We need to face it: Solarplate is done…”
Another no-no for the handlers.
“We will beam our energy from outer space, where the sun is a hundred-fold more efficient. Of course, the investment will require material sacrifice.”

Blinking lights in her box. Would they cut her off?

“Some say that we can escape Earth’s problems by moving everyone to spacehabs, like where I live now. Why can’t they do the math?”
One for Anouk.
“In the past century we’ve built just seven spacehabs, each holding a few thousand people. Where are Earth’s billions to go?

“Above all, we need to say that the ‘Firmament’ is a lie. We need to get past the lies about outer space, and start a new mission for Jupiter. A Jupiter mission will show the world what a great country can do. NASA has the plans…”
A few points from her friend’s position paper.

“No matter how dark the hour, no matter how late the moment of truth, it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness. Just as we chose to bury our carbon in carboxyplast, we can choose now. We can choose to save our water and shrink the Death Belt. We can choose to build ships to Jupiter, a boundless source of fuel.”

Everyone would recognize the source of those lines.

“This morning, someone asked me about Jordi. About whether I will see Jordi someday in heaven. Jordi is now outside of time, along with our great-grandmother Rosa and grandfather Joe, and all of our future children. All of them are pulling for us, and for Anna, and for everyone on Earth to save our planet.”

She finally dared peek at the pollmeter. The scale read 9.9.

The first call in came from Aunt El. The governor’s twin appeared, her model adjusted to show only one head; a way to keep Meg off the record. “Great speech, Mutant.” El winked. “Why not speak at
our
convention? Equal time, for your West Coast branch? We need you on our team. Until Jupiter runs low.”

Her aunt had barely left the box before her mother called. “An ordinary American—a speaker who texts! Ingenious! Your pollmeter’s off the charts.”

“Thanks, Mama.”

“We’ll put you on the list. No more than once a week, I promise.”

“But Mama—”

“Don’t forget, a week from Thursday: The first presidential debate, in Boulder.” Soledad paused for emphasis. “We’ve placed you in a front-row toyseat, appearing right before the podium. Wear your best suit, and be sure to smile.” Soledad nodded as if to herself. “And the following week, guess what—I’ll be up to see you!” A ToyDebate meeting, setting up for Frontera’s debate. The final one before the election.

“
¡Oye!
See you then.”

In Jenny’s toybox, Clive’s post-convention interview was coming through. “While Rosa’s great-granddaughter admirably represents her own views,” the party secretary was telling him, “Unity does not reject solarplating. In fact, we endorse sustainable solarplate development and will slow the rate of Death Belt expansion.”

Clive nodded. “And does Unity endorse the Ramos position that the Firmament is a lie?”

Jenny held her breath. The pollmeter dipped and vacillated, for such an unmentionable notion to be voiced out loud.

The party secretary, his hair immaculate as Clive’s, slightly shifted his head. “As you know, Clive, Unity has a big tent philosophy. We include members of whatever spiritual belief, so long as they support outer space development.”

A hollow pit formed in her stomach. Keep smiling, Jenny told herself dully.

*   *   *

Jenny joined up with Anouk on her way to Reagan Hall to meet the professor about their laughing plants. Overhead, the sausage cloud stretched north, glowing red from the north solar. A group of high school students sailed by, learning to drive the mini-flyers. From the Mound came the roar of motor cars, all the Red Bulls and Ferraris practicing for their Frontera Circuit next Saturday.

“I thought that would be the end of it, but now Mama wants me to do a ‘speech’ every week.”

“Who wouldn’t?” Anouk adjusted the diad beneath her scarf. “It was great. Telling Americans to do math—when did you last hear that?”

“But the party gave up on everything,” she exclaimed. “Outer space development—how can you support that, when you don’t even believe outer space exists?”