The Highest Frontier (45 page)

She shrugged. “A mystery, but it’s only ‘magic.’” Life in a clouded mirror.

“No, really, how did you?”

Jenny pulled him closer. “For a kiss?”

He hadn’t yet sent her a brainkiss. He looked her in the eye. “A real one.”

She cupped his head in her hands and kissed. He held her in his arms, a long satisfying time.

*   *   *

At Lazza’s, amid the noonday crowd, there were only two seats at the bar, next to Leora. As if she’d saved them, Jenny thought. Jenny sat up as usual, she and Tom towering over the power-banded colonists. Above loomed the fourteen-point buck’s head with its gloomy glass-eyed stare.

“How is your campaign?” whispered Leora.

“Not bad.” Jenny ordered her usual chicken sandwich. “Today we’re space-walking. Outside the hab.”

“For repairs?”

Jenny shook her head. “To build a
sukkah.
For the Jewish holiday. You have to see the stars.” She thought of something. “Have you ever been … outside the hab?”

“Often, with my late husband. To inspect for repairs.”

Jenny blinked in surprise.

“But I’ve never seen a Jewish holiday. That would be interesting.”

“Well…” She exchanged a look with Tom. “You could come. I’m sure Coach—that is, Rabbi Porat wouldn’t mind.”

*   *   *

About fifty students gathered at the track with their space suits. Besides the slanball team, many first-years were there, curious about the “outside.” Already halfway up the cap, the grav was half a g. Fran and David skipped around easily, carrying various fruits and branches. Priscilla tripped but recovered herself in slow motion. Enrico was struggling with his suit, which had inflated too soon. With a start, Jenny saw Leora Smythe dragging an old much-used suit, her skirt replaced by overalls.

“Welcome,
uzhpizin,
that is, ‘guests,’ to our Sukkot tradition. Welcome all who would help us build the
sukkah,
a hut to worship God in the wilderness.” Rabbi Porat wore a dark business suit and a fringed prayer shawl. Other than that, he was brisk as usual, like getting up to practice. “Mind your step.”

In the ground a crack opened, and a door slid slowly over. Below was a ladder, down to a dimly lit flight of stairs. A crude maintenance tunnel. Everyone had to climb single file, first down into the substratum, then up the curving stairway. Jenny felt her weight fall away. In her toybox a map showed her progress, curving inward toward the cap at the axis of the rotating hab. As she reached about tenth a g, the stairs gave way to a pair of rails which she climbed hand over hand, like she would inside the space lift. Down, up, or down; which was which? A pungent smell; someone had emptied their stomach. Not so great for everyone else.

“Watch the hole.”

The hole appeared at her feet, up-or-down. Jenny crouched, pushing her suit first through the hole. A bit too fast; she launched herself after it to catch up. The weightless corridor opened out into a hemispherical room.
“Northern Cap Station,”
read her toybox.

Doc Uddin and Frank Lazza were already there waiting, checking out all the suits. Jenny placed her feet into the two leg holes. The amyloid climbed up her legs, and she felt her hair stand on end, as if she were being swallowed by a snake. She waited for Doc Uddin’s inspection before closing her headgear. Sound cut out, all but the hiss of her own breathing.

“Which way is up?”

“How do I move—I’m a statue.”

“Can’t breathe!”

Dios mío.
The doctor hurried off to check someone who’d closed their suit too soon. Fifty newbies heading out to space; this was worse than Homefair.

Jenny flexed her muscles, adjusting the actuators until she could move.
Jordi
—she kept seeing him everywhere. Anyone in a space suit could be Jordi. They had trained together for a month before his great “To Jupiter” speech, at the lunar station, the same one that had launched the fatal Mars mission. Most Unity strategists had advised against it. But Soledad had sided with the proponent. Jordi’s speech had gone over surprisingly well. Something about the sight of young
chicos
headed for space still moved the heart of post-Kessler America. That strategist had taken over Jordi’s schedule, building his image for the next two years, culminating in Battery Park.

Ken floated past her head, carrying a bunch of tree branches. He really seemed into all the rites, although the rabbi still wouldn’t convert him. Fran and David, Illyrian twins, looked indistinguishable in their suits except for their toybox labels. Fran held up the bundle of palms and willows. All the suited students now floated around the station, tagged with names in her toybox. The one tagged “Charlie” waved at her in slow motion.

“Last call before the airlock.” Rabbi Porat’s voice pinged through her toybox. “If you’re feeling queasy, now’s your chance to turn back. This is about observance, not martyrdom.”

A student pulled off his suit and floated back to the tunnel. After a moment, two others followed.

Within Jenny’s suit the low pressure sign came on, as air was pumped out of the chamber. One by one, the suited students headed up-or-down into the next lock. Jenny followed the lightguides. In her toybox, the map showed her at the very end of the pole. Frontera, the medicine capsule.

At last Jenny’s arms pulled back the exit rim. She felt as if she were emerging from a pool. The hab was a black object, blocking the sun from behind. Above, all was black except for the stars. Points of light glowed, like a million lighted cities of vast unknown countries on the opposite side of a universal hab.

A flash. It seemed distant, though there was no way to tell. Homeworld’s laser had caught a stray, she guessed. Out of the corner of her eye, a tiny flash at the hab’s surface, then another. Tiny particles vaporized, too small to be worth catching; though at ten times bullet speed, they might pierce a suit. She swallowed hard.

Straightening out, Jenny stood against the black surface and blinked to engage her surface grippers. Beside her a light came on, illuminating the surface from which they emerged. Deep purple, the microbes swam in the depths. The salt-loving microbes absorbed blue, green, and red, reflecting only the purple-to-ultra range.

At the observation platform, the contours of four poles jutting outward. “Upward,” she mentally corrected. The poles were meant to be the frame, like the Homefair house. Ken floated over, attaching a pole crosswise to a vertical pole, while David Pezarkar attached the other end. Now the “hut” had its first window.

As Jenny watched, she frowned. Something invisible was pulling at Ken, tugging him away and around. Then she remembered. The entire hab was rotating, once a minute. The stars, the entire sparkling blackness, turning forever, around an axis pointing out from the hab across the universe, thirteen billion light-years and counting.

“Help!!”

A space suit was spiraling away, out of control. Heart pounding, Jenny repressed the impulse to blink off her grippers and launch herself after the hapless student. Seconds passed, each one an eternity. At last the student bounced off the barely visible net of anthrax line that enclosed the whole visitor area. The student slowly drifted backward. David headed out to help him return.

As they returned, Jenny noticed the dark Frontera surface had brightened all over, a dim purple glow. Over the past minute, the hab had rotated toward the sun, exposing its microbes to photosynthesize. And the Earth could be seen, just behind the southern cap, beneath the
hijab
of stars. Father Clare—what a backdrop, she thought. This was the place for him to speak, to explain to the town why he was running for mayor.

In her toybox Rabbi Porat began. “We build the
sukkah,
” he explained, “to commemorate the biblical Israelites wandering in the desert for forty years. For them, the desert was their outer space. Their place of visions. Their highest frontier.” He raised his arm toward the pole frame. “They had only crude dwellings, made of plant fibers, which in the desert were scarce. The scant roof barely covered the hut, and cracks between the branches revealed the sky.”

“
Lulav
and
etrog.
” The suited Fran held up a handful of palms, myrtle, and willows. Her other hand held up a large greenish-yellow citron; desiccated by the space vacuum, it was wrinkled as a walnut.

“The commemoration became a harvest festival, for which we thank the Lord by shaking the Four Species of fruits…”

The great square of Pegasus. Jenny caught sight of it, ahead. Farther up, the W of Cassiopeia, and the bright star Vega, marching around. The sweet white wisp of the Milky Way. Out of the corner of her eye came a flash; her eye winced. Whatever it was vaporized with a comet-like trail, presumably lased by Homeworld Security.

At her left, the suited Leora listened intently to the rabbi. Then she turned to Jenny.

“The stars,”
Jenny texted Leora.
“What do you think of the stars? Millions of light-years away?”
How could anyone who walked out in space think the whole world revolved around Earth?

Leora’s eyes peered out from the face plate, which reflected Jenny’s helmet.
“Our pastor says that now that Earth is doomed, God’s universe rotates around Frontera. Frontera is the ark to be saved from the Flood.”

Jenny stared back. Her lips parted but no words came out. Within her suit her hands shook. Her eyes stared back in unconcealed horror.

“What does your pastor say?”
asked Leora.

Jenny swallowed twice.

“Blessed are you, Lord, our God.…” Rabbi Porat’s voice came through, reciting the Sukkot blessing. “Sovereign of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us to dwell in the
sukkah
. Amein.”

Jenny remembered something. She blinked to text Leora; it came out garbled at first, needing to start over twice.
“Father Clare says that all preachers preserve the word of God by scribbling prayers over something infinitely more valuable.”

36

As always on Thursday morning, Jenny rushed home from slanball to catch Life at seven. But her toyroom opened more slowly than usual. Inside, the branches of the tree house were clothed with kudzu. Surprised, then homesick, Jenny watched the fuzzy green leaves swell and grow. The virtual leaves budded and unfolded, extending across the branches, climbing up even over the eight virtual doors.

But her nostalgia soon turned to annoyance. The “kudzu” crowded out everything; it literally buried the doors of the toyroom tree house. Time itself seemed to slow to a crawl, as the kudzu smothered all.

“
Hombre,
what is this green stuff?”

“Not that Convolvula again?”

“LOL,
tonto
, it’s a ghost.”

Her toybox filled with frantic chatter. Not just her own toyroom, but the whole college seemed infected. The windows all ground to a halt, all except for Mary’s Babynet window.
“HELLO.”

From Toy Land, a flickering glimpse of toymaker Valadkhani with her apron full of Phaistos disks.
“Attention: Local Toynet shut down. All classes suspended until further notice.”

Jenny took off her diad and left her cottage. Outside, diad-less students streamed from all directions, laughing and tossing bits of worn amyloid. With classes suspended, there was nothing particular to do. A group of them cornered an elephant in a ring, laughing as the panicked creature tossed back and forth until it at last ran out from under their arms.

By lunchtime, the virtual kudzu was cleared out, with a conspicuous lack of explanation. Anouk claimed to know the cause. “A certain overeducated offspring,” she observed with satisfaction. “One with a propensity for invasives.”

Jenny’s eyes widened.
“No puede ser.”

That afternoon, they met Abaynesh in the lab to set up their plants with the wisdom circuit. The “real” research. “How is your DNA toyworld, with the baobab?” Jenny asked politely. “Did it get restored okay?”

The professor looked away, embarrassed. Behind the row of
Arabidopsis sapiens,
Anouk hid her smile. Mary looked oblivious as usual.

“Tovaleh needs a special school,” muttered Abaynesh. “Never mind. The question is: Which of Ng and Howell’s combinatorial circuits makes a plant to be wise? That is, two plants to be wise about each other.”

Each pot actually contained two seedlings, Jenny saw. The two seedlings had one of Ng and Howell’s combinations of connected neurons; a different combination for every twin pair. The potted twins stretched in vast rows, far longer than twenty, she realized with some apprehension. Anouk and Mary strolled down the rows, their heads alone visible above like moons. In the class window read Frontera’s motto,
Sophias philai paromen.

“So…” Jenny swallowed, trying not to sound stupid. “How can two plants be ‘wise’?”

Abaynesh lifted a tube and squirted the nearest pair of twins, brushing their tips thoughtfully. “We spray them with the scent of insect larvae; the kind that could chew up their leaves. Then they need to communicate with semiochemicals. Each plant emits a different insect repellent. If their neuron circuit exhibits wisdom, then what do you think?” She glared suddenly at Anouk. Not glaring, really, Jenny knew by now; just an intense gaze.

“Together, the two plants ward off insects better than either could alone.” Anouk stroked the flower heads. “So the wise course is to share their potting space, instead of crowding each other out. It’s called the prisoners’ dilemma,” she added in her bored I-know-the-math tone.

The professor nodded. “So how many different circuit connections do we have to test? Jenny?”

Jenny swallowed, remembering all the combinations that spewed out from Ng and Howell’s lab in Seattle. “About … thirty-six hundred?”

“Yes, well, but most of those were barely above background. I suggest you start with the top thirty-six and—” She stopped and stared at the ground. Stooping, she scooped up what looked like a long worm with about a hundred legs.
“Wolf!”
Abaynesh blinked like mad at her toybox. “Quit yodeling already, and get yourself up here.”