The Highest Frontier (5 page)

Jenny remembered dengue fever, back in middle school. Her eyes had ached, her joints ached, her tongue burned till she wanted to die.

“And secure.” Rafael spread his arms. “Where could a thief hide?”

If she could see homes up there in Mount Gilead, they could probably read her chemistry notes.

“A future doctor,” Rafael observed from her toybox. “Excellent. We need more doctors in government.” He nodded smartly. “A tip: Avoid Abaynesh. All the premeds drop her Life class, and take toyHarvard.” Professor Sharon Abaynesh was the botanist who’d promised Jenny a job in her lab, and took her orchids. Rafael looked up and leaned toward Jenny confidentially. “Another tip,” he whispered. “For politics, take Hamilton. He’s magnificent.” He pointed across the street. “There’s your home.”

Across the street stood a peach-colored amyloid cottage with a clear dome on the roof, the promised greenhouse. Nearby in a tree a cardinal tweeted as if impressed.

Soledad paused before the gracefully shaped tree, with its curious multipointed leaves. “Maple,” she sighed.

“
Acer saccharum,
sugar maple.”

The cottage was surrounded by a well-mown lawn, although one spot looked dug up by some kind of animal. Furrows in the mud suggested long claws.

“A bear tried to dig a den,” explained Rafael. “Just a teddy bear,” he reassured her. “Maintenance will fill it in. A tip: Mothballs discourage bears.”

A lizard scampered up the wood-textured shakes, whipping its blue tail.
“
Eumeces fasciatus,
five-lined skink.”
At Jenny’s gaze, the door slowly opened.

Inside the cottage, a sitting room with a wide picture window looked out upon pines. The printer was still forming cushions for the couch, out of amyloid pumped up from the microbes. Barely noticing, Jenny ran upstairs. The dome-shaped greenhouse was there, the sprinkler system, the level trays, the drains. All set, except for her plants. What if that Professor Abaynesh didn’t know how to care for them? Orchids were tricky.

“Jenny?” called her mother from the living room, to be shared with her
compañera
. “Remember to print out breakfast, every day.”

“Sí, Mama.”
Jenny went back down to the living room. At the window, she froze. “Look out there—a deer, and there’s another. So tiny, with their cream puff tails.” The deer were minis, of course, like most of Frontera’s other fauna, about the size of terriers.

Soledad frowned. “They carry brucellosis.” President Ramos had died of brucellosis. Jenny and her brother had never been allowed pets of any kind.

As Jenny came downstairs, Rafael was telling her father, “Let’s check out the toyroom.” He tapped a door; it slid into the wall, revealing a toyroom. “You’ll spend lots of time here.”

The toyroom looked standard, eight plain gray walls and a floor that was solid for now. Jenny stretched her arms to touch both sides.

At her touch, the room filled with sunlight. The walls vanished, and blue “firmament” of a sky rose all around, above an island ringed by a beach. A sultry voice called, “Hey,
chico,
where’ve you been?” The beach divided in eight pielike sections. Each pie section presented a different reclining swimsuit-clad
chica
. Two of the
chicas
were felines with a cat face, claws, and a long twisting tail. A third had a long elephant trunk.

Jenny stretched her arms; one hand touched, then the other, too wide for comfort, she thought. The beach vanished, and the gray walls returned.

Rafael’s face had darkened. “My deepest apologies. The teddies should have cleared the previous user.”

“System clear,” called her father in a level voice. “Code oh-six-oh-oh-four-two-seven.” The room filled with white noise.

“Not to worry,” assured Rafael, “Toy Land will send a teddy out to restart.” Rafael looked aside, his eyes defocused as if checking a call. “If you’ll excuse me, my next frog just arrived. Permit me however to request the honor of your presence…” In her toybox appeared an engraved invitation to Monte Carlo Night, a black-tie formal at the Ferrari motor club. “After the first week of class. An evening of elegance,” he emphasized. “I will see you shortly at the powwow.” As Rafael left, an actual frog appeared, a tiny brown thing that sprang across his trailing shoelace. It was nothing like those monster frogs that gobbled squirrels in Somers.
“
Pseudacris crucifer,
spring peeper.”
The peeper leapt again and vanished in a bush.

In the bedroom, Soledad already had Jenny’s one little bag open, setting Great-Grandma Rosa’s picture on the amyloid desk printed out next to her Lincoln bed. “Mama,” Jenny insisted, “you don’t have to do all this.”

“Why not? It’s my last chance.” Her back was toward Jenny, her black hair hiding her face. Mama would soon be gone, Jenny realized—ten thousand kilometers away. Her stomach tightened. She could never think of things to say at a time like this.

“Remember,” Soledad warned, “your aunts will call.” Soledad’s cousins, the Centrist governor and her twin, were genuinely fond of Jenny, but they always managed to call her at the most embarrassing moment.

“Hello?” From outside called the voice of a child.
“Layla Vimukta, South Andaman, Toynet Specialist.”
The girl outside looked about age six, with long black braids, holding a Phaistos disk. She pressed a button in the spiral; the Phaistos lit up “
WINNER!
” and set a new pattern. “Someone called in a toyroom?”

Jenny nodded. “We did.”

The teddy strode inside, her back pocket sporting a jump rope. At the door to the toyroom, the teddy paused. “Commence testing power-up, oh-oh-six-seven-nine.”

A crosshatch wove across the eight walls, stretching and squeezing enough to make you sick. “New client entry; restart Toynet four-point-two,” added the teddy. No visible response. “Eight-fold splice call.” Several incantations later, the room came alive. Eight different wedge-views faced each other, like slices of world pie: a library, a beach, a tree house.

“Good afternoon,” spoke the melodious generic voice of the toyroom. “Welcome to Toynet, the universal networld service founded by Gil Wickett. Please select your homeworld. You may pick one of our eight default worlds, or custom order. Be advised, however, that custom orders may not splice correctly with all locations.”

“Bien.”
Soledad offered the teddy a lollipop.

The girl’s face lit up. “Thank you oh so very much.”

George asked, “Have you tried Toynet Five?” His voice was measured, without inflection. “T-five splices better.”

“We’ve got T-five in testing.” The teddy licked her sweet. “Remember to set your ghost protection.” Popping the sweet in her mouth, the teddy headed outside, braids dancing, then skipped her rope down the street.

The default world categories appeared: “Beach Caribbean,” eight different islands; “Famous Streets,” from Fifth Avenue to Champs Elysées; “Lost Atlantis,” eight different coastal landmarks, from Long Beach to the Florida Keys, submerged among the fish. “Tree House” looked
chulo
: eight different tree houses, in different forest settings from Canada spruce to Costa Rican rain forest. Jenny picked the house that stood tallest, upon a slender pine nearly bare of leaves, even taller than Old Bet on her pedestal. From inside the cozy cabin, windows looked out upon the canopy below.

“School in a tree house.” Jenny smiled. Here she could visit Jordi. At home, someone might always walk in, but here, she could door-chain through to meet Jordi’s sim, and no one would know. The mental forbade her, but she got to him in her toybox when she could get away with it. This toyroom would be even better.

A wall of the tree house melted and shimmered, revealing a laboratory full of plants. The laboratory spliced seamlessly with the tree house, as if it were just extending the room. Beyond the plants sat a desk, above which loomed a gigantic model of DNA. A woman in soil-stained jeans looked up from one of the flats and turned around: Sharon Abaynesh, professor of science. Her jeans had a flap torn down at the knee, and she wore a tight Italian sweater. Her black hair was twisted up into arches. “I’m glad I caught you before the powwow. You can see your orchids.”

The Blood Star cattleya, the sweet-smelling vanilla with its unassuming green petals, and the giant vanda with its plate-sized purple flowers. Orchids were epiphytes, their roots growing on air and mist. A few leaves drooped but the water bulbs beneath each flower stood full. An automatic mister sprayed the vanda.

“Thanks so much,” exclaimed Jenny. “Are you sure they’re okay?”

“I scanned them all. You’ve kept them virus-free; quite a trick, that. You can have them back tomorrow.”

“
¡Guao!
Thanks so much, Professor.”

The professor gestured toward a flat of what looked like weeds with little lollipop leaves. “You wanted research. You can work on
Arabidopsis sapiens.
”

From a cluster of leaves thrust a stalk with an odd white inflorescence like a pair of ears pressed together. Jenny blinked her taxa button, but no response. Not a well-known breed.

“Your experiment will test—”

At an angle, another door opened; the view jiggled sickeningly for two seconds before it spliced. Dean Kwon had donned a black robe over her purple T-shirt. “All students, parents, and owls,” she called, “report to the Mound for Opening Powwow. Owls, line up your students on Buckeye Trail facing south.…”

Soledad nodded with a knowing smile. “We don’t want to miss Dylan’s entrance.” Dylan Chase, who Jenny knew as “Uncle Dylan,” was president of Frontera College. President Chase would welcome the students and their parents. And then the parents would leave. For just a moment Jenny felt a chill.

In the plant lab, Professor Abaynesh picked up her black gown. “Powwows, enough already,” she muttered. “Always interrupting research. See you at the Mound.” She looked around. “Where is it?”

A stalk of the mouse-eared plant shivered, and the pressed ears parted wide, revealing a coiled tendril. The tendril extended toward the wall, where a mortarboard hung from a peg.

Abaynesh took the mortarboard. “Thanks, Ari,” she told the plant. The lab vanished into the tree house wall. Jenny stared after her.

“Let’s not be late.” As Soledad headed out, she paused by the other bedroom door. “Is your
compañera
here?”

Jenny knocked on the door. No answer. No sign of Mary Dyer in the tie-dyed dress. “We’ll try again later.”

“Your father and I will have to catch the lift right after the powwow.” Soledad frowned, disappointed to miss her daughter’s
compañera.

“Look here.”
Her father was waiting outside.
“Come look.”
From outside, he was staring into Mary’s bedroom window.

Embarrassed, Jenny nonetheless peeked through the window. The bedroom had no luggage, but there stood an enormous aquarium. The aquarium was full of water with a bit of sand at the bottom and a light bank overhead, but as yet no sign of live occupants.

“She keeps fish.” Jenny smiled. “I’ll bet the coonskin DIRGs quarantined them.”

A low rumbling began. The sound vibrated in the ground beneath Jenny’s feet, so low in pitch that she could barely hear. The sound grew; the beating of drums. The drumming filled the spacehab in all directions.

In her toybox Dean Kwon opened a window with a blinking map. “All frogs head north to the Mound. Line up at the powwow ground.”

4

Jenny and her parents strolled north up Buckeye Trail amid the naked trees, toward the deepening roar of the drums. Behind them the south solar had dimmed, while ahead the north solar brightened, casting long pencil shadows south. The space between trees burst with color, blue heather and yellow coneflowers. Now that she’d seen one peeper, she saw them all over, tiny frogs leaping out of a bush and getting squashed underfoot. From the woods a mini-deer bounded out across Buckeye Trail. There followed a mini-elephant, more leisurely, then another one leading a baby whose trunk held her bushy tail.

After Wickett Hall, side trails led west to various academic buildings, the redbrick amyloid Joseph Ramos Hall of Literature, the classical Harding Hall of Social Studies, and the postvirtualist Reagan Hall of Science, an opalescent sphere sprouting giant colored jelly beans. As she walked Jenny searched deeper in Toynet for the professor’s plant.
“
Arabidopsis thaliana,
var.
sapiens,
”
came up at last in a window of the Levi-Montalcini Brain Research Institute.
“Forms human neurons. Model system for nerve function and development.”

Rafael’s window opened. The drums were now deafening, drowning out speech.
“Jenny and Mary,”
he texted,
“Ricky and Reesie. The line starts here.”
There was still no sign of Mary. The new students had all lined up along Buckeye Trail, most with their laces trailing behind their shoes, some red, some lemon, the year’s “in” colors. Jenny looked down upon all their heads, then beyond. Beyond the racetrack rose the northern cap of the cylindrical spacehab, cupped like a hand.

Just ahead an escalator climbed to the powwow ground atop the Mound. Giant drums ringed the ground, each pounded by seven tribal elders. The broad grassy hill enclosed several underground tiers of slots and games. Flag-waving taxplayers gathered outside to watch the college opening ceremony extend the daily powwow. The first of the spacehab casinos, the Mound was now considered retro compared to New York’s Towers or Mississippi’s Rapture.

A window winked open, Reese and Ricky Tsien, then Fritz somebody, then another. Half the students were Reese or Fritz, the “in” names. Many were cultured Newmans, blond and black, male and female. Their tiny windows glittered with skaters and violinists, warworlds and danceworlds.
“Visit Gloriana—my Elizabethan court.” “Come visit my Candyworld—be a gumdrop!”

Soledad squeezed Jenny’s hand. “Go ahead, dear,” she said, barely audible above the drums. “We’ll find our way up with the others.” Jenny watched her parents head off, her heart pounding. Then their two windows blinked open in her box.