The Highest Frontier (17 page)

The class met in the same Harding Hall seminar room as Uncle Dylan’s class, but now furnished with plush maroon chairs. Jenny set down her orchid on the table, which was now inlaid wood, Louis something or other, with rounded ends and legs. The toywall was covered by a curtain.

Professor Hamilton turned from the two students seated already. Not quite her height, he wore a dark suit and tie, like the Ferrari
chicos
. A degree in baraminology at Whitcomb, doctorate from Chicago. “Jennifer Ramos Kennedy.” He spoke her full name, like at graduation. He extended a hand to shake hers. “Such a pleasure to have you, Jenny. I made sure to save you a place.”

Jenny nodded, though surprised. She recalled that her father knew him. Her mouth suddenly froze, conscious of the other students arriving and this professor she didn’t know. Looking down at her plant, she texted,
“My father speaks highly of you.”

She looked up just in time to see Hamilton’s face shift, a hint of alarm, as if surprised she knew of her father’s connection. Then he relaxed. “You are an award-winning life scientist. Aristotle invented life science, as well as politics.”

Among the other students, fifteen in all, Jenny knew only Ricky and Mary. Mary Dyer, her odd
compañera,
sat there with her water bottle and her box of pretzels. Jenny tried to text her a warning not to eat during class, but Mary still had no toybox. Mary’s fingers groped the table unnervingly.

The professor went and stood behind a table podium. “Aristotle was born twenty-five centuries ago in an ancient city of Greece. And yet, in your first year at college, all of you have something in common with the man whose book we are reading.” Hamilton paused, scanning the faces. “From his home city on a northern peninsula, Aristotle sailed the Aegean Sea to attend Plato’s school in Athens. The sea was then a dangerous place, a place of angry gods and sudden storms, where even the most advanced tools of seafaring might not save a stricken ship. Like Aristotle, each of you had to leave the city of your birth and cross a great sea, the sea of air and space, in order to reach your school.” Space within the moon’s orbit—Centrists claimed to “accept” that.

Hamilton placed his book on the podium and opened it. The students all took out their books. The pages rustled as they opened, like the sound of opening presents. “‘Book One. Every state is an association of persons who intend some good purpose. And that type of association we call ‘political.’”

Jenny fingered the flexible pages. Back in ancient Greece, Aristotle wrote upon animal skins, in a language long gone. How did this amyloid book in the twenty-second century relate to what he wrote? She tried to imagine a world where you had to kill animals to write, let alone eat.

The professor looked up from his book. “Aristotle became the greatest student, and the greatest teacher of all time. He taught the child who became Alexander the Great, the world’s greatest conqueror. He returned to Athens to found his own school, ultimately a school to the world’s rulers for centuries to come.”

Hamilton leaned forward on the podium. “But the school of politics is not an easy school, nor one to make us comfortable. Politics is about how rulers rule, how leaders lead and governors govern. And, in every
polis
the principles of governance are understood only dimly by most of those who are governed. To lift the veil and behold those principles may shock us, may transform what we think we know about the world. Tell me: As you read Aristotle’s first pages, did anything … surprise you?”

The dreaded first question. It hovered like a cloud drifting around the table from one student to the next. The crunch of Mary’s pretzel marred the silence. At last, a hand lifted, a Newman-chinned
chico
with tousled black hair. “I was surprised that we’re reading Aristotle without Plato first. I mean, isn’t Aristotle obviously quarreling with his old teacher?”

Nervous looks. Half the students sat up straighter, their stance assuring everyone that they too had read Plato first, while the others slouched back in their plush chairs, desperately hoping to avoid being called on.

“Enrico, that’s wonderful that you’ve read Plato. You can help point out those parts where Plato is engaged.”
Enrico Peña,
from San Juan. His home had finally become a state paired with Cuba: one purple, the other gold. That kind of politics Jenny understood. “Who else was surprised by Aristotle?” the professor asked.

A
chica
with a prominent nose ring raised her hand.
Priscilla Cho,
said her box. “Like, I read
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
. So, this Aristotle says slaves and women are just tools?”

Hamilton smiled. “Tools, yes; but different kinds of tools, Aristotle says. Not an all-purpose Delphic knife. Only barbarians fail to distinguish women from slaves.” He looked around the room. “What about us, today? Which of us are not ‘tools’ of a state?”

Another long pause.

Ricky raised his hand. “We all play taxes.”

“Very good, Ricky,” agreed Hamilton, “we all play taxes.”

“Only if we want to,” said Priscilla.

“The rule of desire,” muttered the professor, as if rehearsing some ancient argument from elsewhere. “The ultimate end of democracy. But Aristotle begins way before democracy. ‘Every state’ he aims to describe, from tyrannies to democracies. Every state consists of ruler and ruled. And who is the ruler? ‘For he that can by his intelligence foresee things needed is by nature ruler and master.’” Hamilton smiled, his eyes darting toward one student, then another. “Is this view so unfamiliar? How were you all chosen for Frontera? Is not ‘foreseeing’ what the ‘forehead’ does?”

Priscilla insisted, “We don’t own slaves.”

“Slaves, indeed, we shall return to that presently. First, let’s not miss a crucial step. According to Aristotle, what makes a man a man? A human being?”

The Newman-chinned Enrico said, “Man is a political animal. By his nature, man lives in a state.”

“That’s right, Enrico, a man must live in a state. So, is a man outside a state not a human being?”

Silence. Jenny thought irritably, A human being is a human being.

Mary asked, “What about elephants?”

Jenny swallowed, suddenly tense. She hoped Mary would not act too much out of place. She felt at once protective, though resentful of her
compañera
.

“That’s a good question, Mary. What about elephants?”

Ricky raised a hand. “Speech,” he said. “Speech is what makes us human.”

Everyone seemed to let out a breath. Elephants couldn’t talk; only humans could talk, they all learned that in kindergarten. That was the trouble with Aristotle, Jenny thought; one moment he sounded like kindergarten, the next he went off a cliff.

“You’re right, Ricky, speech is most important. Speech makes the state possible; makes humanity possible.”

“But,” said Priscilla, “this book says, like, the state comes before the person? Actually, the state is just to help people get along.”

“And what is a person outside a state? What is a hand removed from the body?”

Mary said, “A hand removed from a body can be a person. It just has to grow.”

Silence, a silence deeper than before, more awkward. Two other
chicas
exchanged glances with raised eyebrows.

Jenny felt bad for Mary.
“What she said would be true of a colonial animal,”
she texted to the class, watching her plant.
“A sponge. A piece broken off a sponge grows into a whole one.”

“Jenny, how observant.” The professor smiled triumphantly. “Aristotle observed marine sponges. ‘A sponge responds to attack by contracting to protect itself.’ If a sponge could speak, and if it lived in a state, then it would be a person, wouldn’t it?”

*   *   *

After class, Hamilton drew her aside. “Jenny, I’m so glad you joined this class. You show a true gift for leadership.”

“Thank you.”

“Jenny, I would like to get to know you better, and help you make the most of this class. Would you stop by my office?”

“Thanks, I’ll make an appointment.”
She felt flattered, though surprised. Getting to know a professor was part of college. But why would this Centrist professor seek her? She remembered something.
“The Greeks didn’t deny the sea just because they lost a ship.”

Hamilton bowed slightly, as if to a fencing opponent. “The Greeks, though, had gods and monsters, and a cliff where the world ended. I can see you and I shall have much to discuss.”

13

Back at her cottage, Jenny found an egg carton on the porch. Inside were a dozen blown eggs, each with an individual hand-painted rose. She flushed, feeling warm all over. She admired each one before setting the carton down on the table. She went to her bedroom to start her homework; a mistake, for she soon nodded off.

She awoke to an ear-splitting crash. Dazed, she sat straight up in bed, trying to remember where she was. Something was crashing through the next room. Her living room. Blinking at her contacts for emergency, she crept to her bedroom door. There she stopped, afraid to look out.

One final crash, as if every last window in the house had caved in. Then silence. Cautiously, Jenny crept out to the living room.

The room was a total wreck. Window shards littered the futon,
The Two Fridas
lay black and crumpled on the floor, the painted eggs scattered. A trail of blood led outside the fractured picture window. In the peach-colored light of early morning, Jenny glimpsed a blood-spattered deer limping back to the pines.

From the hallway came her roommate. Mary Dyer smelled oddly of something like chlorine, yet her face and arms still glowed all over. Her eyes held an intense questioning look. With a quick step she was at the window, her fists raised, pounding on the glass. The glass, what was left of it, flew outward, piece by piece.

Jenny’s hands flew to her face. “
¡Dios mío!
Mary, what are you doing!” She grabbed Mary’s shoulders from behind, but, surprisingly strong, her roommate kept pounding until the glass was gone from the sill.

Then abruptly Mary stopped. Her fists still fluoresced clean, no trace of blood. She turned and studied Jenny’s face. “I was trying to help.”

“Help? Are you crazy?”

“The window is clear now.”

So it was. A breath of azalea floated in on the breeze, and the frogs peeped like crazy, while an occasional “oo-aw” rose above their chorus.

“If we need to do better,” Mary said, “tell us how. Tell us how to be human.”

Jenny sighed. “Look,
I
didn’t break the window—it was that deer. It bounded in here, and out again.”

“Deer are eighty percent human.” Mary’s face never changed expression; it almost seemed painted on. “Can you explain to us, what is the function of deer?”

Jenny shook her head impatiently. “Deer have no function. They have creampuff tails, and they look cute. How will we ever clear this mess?”

“Deer look cute,” echoed Mary. “So do humans. It won’t save them.”

From outside came shrieks and squeals of elephants. A gray trunk probed the window, then the elephant slunk inside, surprisingly agile.

“Get out!” demanded Jenny.

A second elephant clambered in over the broken window, cleverly avoiding a scratch. It had herded the deer into the window, Jenny guessed. Now it sidled over to the printer, as if it knew what to do. To Jenny’s astonishment, the printer put out peanuts.

“Who’s there?” A man stepped in, his height about Jenny’s chin level, in a plaid shirt and denim overalls with the rocking-horse logo. Bands of amyloid circled his biceps and his calves, the energy harvesters worn by Mount Gilead colonists to eke every bit of power they could.
“Travis Tharp, College Security,”
read his window. He gave a low whistle. “Looks like the track at the Lunar Circuit.”

The elephants withdrew their trunks and lumbered out in a hurry. Apparently they knew College Security.

“Thanks, Mr. Tharp. How can we clean this up?” It was a good thing they’d put her greenhouse on the roof.

“Never you mind, we’ll take care of the venison. And beef up their contraceptives.” Tharp glanced at her torn futon, the shattered windows. He called out, “Code forty-two: restore.”

The window fragments melted and slowly seeped into the floor. Meanwhile, the outer frame of the window grew panes slowly creeping toward the center. The Frida poster puddled away, but a new one took shape on the wall. The torn futon merged itself together. It made Jenny queasy to watch, as if she herself might just melt away. Only the scattered eggshells remained on the floor, irreparable, although two miraculously survived in the carton.

“It’s nice having you young folks back,” observed Tharp. “The hab gets mighty quiet in the summers.”

Remembering her manners, Jenny extended her hand. Tharp walked stiffly; a hemiprosthete, Jenny realized, his whole lower torso and legs replaced. His toy window showed a Purple Heart and the ice-blue Antarctic Defense ribbon. “You live here all year round?”

“I’m a homesteader,” Travis explained. “One of the first in Mount Gilead. Came to stock the spacehab with Quade.” Travis nodded as if to himself. “Deer, I could see, they’re good hunting—arrows only, of course. Wouldn’t do to have bullets shooting across the sky.” His gaze strayed outside to some shards of amyloid from the window that had failed to rejoin the structure.

“You may glean them,” Jenny offered.

“Much obliged.” Travis picked up a shard and applied his left-leg power band to draw what little energy remained. Colonists had strict energy quotas, and appreciated whatever extra they could get.

Jenny was thinking of what he’d said about stocking the hab. “Why elephants? I thought the hab stocked only Ohio native creatures.”

Travis shrugged. “The mini-elephants were made originally as guides for the disabled. A few donkey genes got mixed in. Smarter than dogs, and tamer than monkeys. But then a couple escaped.” Adam and Eve pachyderms. “They’re all over Ohio now, down to the Death Belt.”