The Highest Frontier (65 page)

Claro,
Jenny thought with a sigh.

“Especially,” added Meg, “when our conjoined body is subject to all sorts of ailments the public never hears about.”

“Lung infections,” offered El.

“Could take us out any day.”

“Just like that.”

Meg observed, “Our lieutenant governor’s the best, though.” That was true, unlike other states where the governor and lieutenant governor were not on speaking terms. Meg’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “There’s still the recount.”

“But recounts always favor Unity,” said El. “I wonder why. Maybe your dad knows.”

“What!” exclaimed Jenny.

Meg observed, “The Founding Fathers never heard of a recount. Maybe for good reason. Look, we know voting is done. Obsolete.”

“Outmoded as a telegraph,” agreed El. “Might as well flip a coin. It would be a lot cheaper.”

“But what’s to replace it?” Meg asked. “Did your ultra ever say?”

Jenny shook her head. “They do no better.”

Meg looked at the plant. “This ‘souvenir.’ How long does its effect last?”

“I don’t know.” Jenny thought back to her reading. “If it’s like other stimuli, the response will adapt—maybe even swing the other way.” It sure did for Hamilton. But different people might react differently.

The two heads looked at each other. “So we’ll do the Nixon thing,” said Meg. “Let it be, for the good of the country. Let the Kennedy babes have their bottle.”

“And we’ll have
mucho
fun watching Gar and Anna try to get along in the White House, for the next four years.” Holding up the plant, Meg and El turned to leave.

The last wisdom plant was leaving with them. Jenny’s mouth fell open to protest. Then she clapped her hand over it. Fair was fair.

At the door, the governor paused. “Thanks a bunch, Jenny.
Hasta la vista.
”

“Four years from now,” added El.

59

The microwave link from their solar station was restored, after a huge chunk of Kessler trash had somehow blocked the entire beam. Somehow—there was a big question. At Homeworld, nobody was talking; the kind of nobody-talking that meant plenty of lawyers buzzing. For once the Creep had reached too far. Meanwhile, Toynet was restored, with printout restricted until power was fully up. In Washington, President Bud congratulated FEMA for “doing a heck of a job” on the relief effort.

In the hab, as Quade got the pumps back working, the muddy soup began to recede. Piles of debris remained on the hillside, pressed together in unpredictable clumps: broken scraps of carboxyplast, a Chinese puzzle half assembled, a student’s Aristotle, a drawer from Orin’s real oak desk, and a surprising number of jigsaw pieces from the chaplain’s office. From Mount Gilead came a pigeon, flapping awkwardly with a wisp of Indian grass in its beak. The pigeon settled and pecked at the flotsam.

“Jenny?” In her toybox Tom appeared in the boat with Father Clare. “We’ve found Charlie.”

“Charlie!” She rushed down the hill to meet the boat, careful to keep to the boardwalk laid down upon the treacherous mud, where anyone could sink to their waist.

The boat got as far as it could, until it lodged in the mud. As Jenny arrived, she became aware of several things simultaneously: that Tom and Father Clare looked very solemn; that no one was rushing off for help; and that the form lying in the boat was completely still.

“Charlie!”
Jenny climbed into the boat. The face and chest had blotches of dusky red. The eyes were unseeing. Braced against the boat, she shoved her hands beneath the back and shoulders, lifting up the huge slippery weight. The head fell back like a hinge
. “Charlie! What’s your name? Who is the president?”

Someone else leaned over, blocking the light. “Jenny. Look up here.”

Jenny looked up, not like a human, more like a wild thing. Part of her was aware that Mfumo stood there, aiming her toybox. “Sorry, Jenny. Just doing my job.”

*   *   *

There is no more difficult task for a college administrator than to inform parents of the fatal injury to their child. Of course, there is a standard protocol, which Dylan had used only once before, when a frog was overcome by alcohol overdose. Now he had three sets of parents to inform. The most difficult was Charlie—the Chase Scholar, the first-generation frog who asked the best questions. In short, the kind of student for whom a college like Frontera would always make the most difference.

To be sure, other administrators pitched in to help, Clare explaining the search effort and how the bodies were recovered, Helen extolling each student’s academic accomplishments, Nora describing their vibrant contributions to the college community, and the student council president describing the deep sense of loss felt by all the fellow students upon their passing, those left behind in this mortal universe. But still, as old Witherspoon had told him back in the day, the ultimate burden, like so many others, rested upon the president.

The young families and the elderly were housed in the Mound, plus about half the students. Dylan spent the night outdoors beneath the maple tree, which was sacred to the Shawnee. He could not sleep. Above there were no human stars to count, no points of light from human habitations across the sky.

Beside him Clare rolled over and touched his arm.

Dylan asked, “Do you think we belong here?”

“You mean, the spacehab?”

“The spacehab should be independent. But we’re not.”

“We’re interdependent,” said Clare. “Like everyone else.”

“We shouldn’t be losing young people.”

“Based on average mortality over the past decade, we’d expect to have lost four. Why should Providence favor us?”

Dylan grimaced. “The cold comfort of statistics.” He added, “I hope it all proves worth it. Our little … exercise of frontier air.”

“You’re the historian. Never underestimate the march of folly.”

“I detest history,” Dylan exclaimed. “Despite all our folly, I believe humans were meant to reach the stars.” Someday.

60

After Thanksgiving, Jenny came back to help rebuild. The hab interior was dotted with brick-shaped modulars labeled
FEMA US GOVT PROPERTY
. FEMA’s DIRGs, generic brown-suited humanoids, swarmed everywhere. The “brownies” helped rebuild Wickett Hall and restore the flow of amyloid up to the cafeteria. All around, the mud had dried and cracked, with huge crevasses where the substratum had settled. Boardwalks and downed trees were everywhere. But help was pouring in. Jenny’s HuriaNews photo was all over Toynet, the “Pietà in Space,” iconic emblem of the disaster. One picture is worth a trillion in aid.

The remains of two fallen students were transported home, but Charlie’s parents asked to bury him in the slope of the powwow ground. The college held a quiet memorial, no podiums or processions, just a sharing of words and flowers.

“God the Father and Mother.” Father Clare spoke with the few gathered students, faculty and villagers standing amid their double shadows. He held in his hands the Anaxagoras palimpsest-Medieval prayer book, which had survived the flood. “We call upon You in your timeless realm to take up the souls of our departed companions. Their time upon Earth that revolves, with us who evolve, seemed to us all too short, but is now infinite. Your Son’s time on Earth, too, was cut short; so it’s left to us to continue His work.”

“Amen.” Leora placed a coneflower on the grave. “On behalf of Mount Gilead, we honor this volunteer’s service to our emergency medical team.” Leora’s children looked up as a Shawnee drum sounded. An eagle feather behind his head, Bobby Foxtail Forrester tapped the drum and sang a song for fallen braves.

Dylan looked around the group, meeting the eyes of each student. “Those of you who returned to rebuild Frontera—thanks.” He continued, “If we return having faced our worst fears, as indeed we have, we return in sorrow for those we miss. Their lives call on us for vigilance—the vigilance we each owe ourselves, to renew our purpose to serve our planet Earth. We rededicate our lives that Earth will endure, in its voyage amid a trillion-trillion stars.”

“Oo-oo-oo
oo-aw.”
Overhead, a sleepy owl ruffled its feathers.

“And now, as the pioneer president Rosa Schwarz used to say, ‘When you put your hand to the plow, you can’t put it down until you get to the end of the row. No time to waste—set your sights on Jupiter.’”

As Jenny passed the grave, she left a vanilla. The flowers would fade, she thought, and who would remember? Like most ordinary Americans, there would be no toyworld about Charlie, only a balm in Gilead. But someone had to carry on his courage. People like Charlie needed her now.

*   *   *

Tom had spent Thanksgiving with Jenny in Somers. Now he was back in the hab, on the roof with his shirt off, nailing shingles onto the modular. Jenny swung the hammer too, getting much better at it. She took frequent rest breaks, watching Tom on the roof.

Tom stopped, extending an arm that Michelangelo could have drawn. “Come on up.”

“That’s okay.”

“It’s only a modular, not that high. Enjoy the view—you can see out to the new hospital.”

“I like the view from here.” Still, maybe it was worth a try. Heart pounding, she took one step up the ladder, then another. That was what college was all about: always another step up, and never dare look back.

At the roof edge, the wind lifted her hair. Tom gave her a hand. At last she sat on the shingles, with Tom’s arm around her. She could see the modular rooftops, and the dorms’ carboxyplast skeletons, and the academic buildings as far as Reagan. From above, the courthouse and the church spire pointed down. Little gray squares of carboxyplast appeared, as the colonists rebuilt.

“You solved today’s molecule.” Tom’s molecule, the one he had posted.

She nodded. “It’s an iridodial derivative. Another semiochemical. Where’d you find it? Pile worms?”

Tom shook his head. “It was found in shallow water off the Florida coast, above old Miami. It’s a controlled substance, Semerena says.”

“But … a human semiochemical? What’s it doing there? What made it?”

“No one knows.” The vast flooded coast was just the right depth for ultra.

“Maybe Anouk knows.”

*   *   *

Anouk had stayed on in the hab, still banned from Earth. “But Rafael’s family got me a special dispensation for Christmas!” She beamed. “From the president of Mexico.”

“Muy bien.”
Jenny sat with her in their modular, roommates until their deluxe housing got restored. Jenny’s toybox was hopelessly full, from Tusker-12 inviting her to spend spring break at the beach, to Vice President Guzmán offering a summer internship in Havana. “We have a new semiochemical to figure out.”

Anouk blinked her window several research publications. “A mind-altering agent, with distinctive properties.
Écoute,
we need a new research project.”

“Preferably something legal.” Jenny put her hands behind her head and leaned back in her rickety chair, back against the carboxyplast wall. “You know, you did great during the Flood,” she told Anouk. “You saved my life. And the plant.” Which California’s governor had walked off with.

Anouk lifted her hand, her third finger gracefully curved.
“Ce n’est rien.”

The tumor mouse was back in Jenny’s toybox, sniffing around the windows. “When I’m a hundred, like Rita, I’ll run for president. If our husbands have passed, you can be my First Lady.”

Anouk eyed her skeptically. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“What? It’s the one job where you don’t have to be a citizen.” They would need their own wisdom plants, though. Jenny wondered if Abaynesh had saved any. She glanced at her own temporary greenhouse, a glass box with room for half a dozen pots.

*   *   *

At Reagan Hall, the structure had emerged intact, maintained by the backup generator. Most of the flooded equipment was useless, but colleagues from Earth shipped up enough controllers to restore the animal colonies. And the plants; but not the lost genetic stocks.

“Your plants,” Jenny asked Abaynesh. “What became of them?”

“The seeds were stored on the second floor.”

“I suppose our experiment is gone.”

“We can plant and start over.” Abaynesh sounded as if she had other things in mind. She leaned back in her chair, her face a bit flushed, while Meg-El coiled upon her round belly.

“It will be nice for Tova,” said Jenny, “having baby twins.”

“One,” corrected Abaynesh. “One is much healthier than twins,” she added with her usual tact. “A brain needs the whole womb, to reach its potential.”

Jenny thought this over. “Rita Levi-Montalcini had a twin.” Her sister Paola, the Italian artist.

“That’s true. Imagine if she’d been single.” Abaynesh gave Jenny a sharp look. “We’ll make a New Yorker of you yet.”

She took the plunge. “What about the controls? Did you save any?”

The professor looked back over her shoulder, and around. She took off her diad; Jenny did the same. “I saved seeds, and the whole sequence. We’re waiting to see the trial.” The great presidential experiment. “The side effects, if any. I put in for a patent, just in case.”

“Oh,” Jenny mouthed without a sound. So far, president-elect Carrillo had promised all the right things—clean government, ban on solarplate, mission to Jupiter. But after inauguration, who could say.

“But how can I stay here, if the college won’t permit my research?” The professor added, “I got a job offer from Montreal. They’re about to open their first spacehab. And for Alan, their library holds the largest Judaica collection in North America.”

Jenny’s face fell. “I mean, how nice for you.”

“And Tova would have a good school. As for me, this place was never a good fit.”

“But I thought so,” Jenny blurted. “I’ll miss you.”

“Really?” The professor looked up as if this might be a new idea. “Well, we’ll see. I would hate to leave … her.” Jenny’s lost
compañera.

“Do you ever hear from her? Text, I mean.”

“She could be anywhere now.”

*   *   *

Dylan’s Senior Staff met in a sealed conference room with Glynnis Carrillo, the appointed director of Homeworld Security and Space Energy. The DIRGs’ neck rings were coded blue.