The Highest Frontier (22 page)

Up the walk came Mary Dyer, her enigmatic
compañera
. Water bottle in hand, Mary paused at the green tubing. “Bears were here digging.”

Jenny was puzzled. “Bears?”

“Digging, and planting those things.”

“People were digging,” Jenny corrected wearily. “Maintenance workers.” How much longer could this Mary last? she wondered. “To keep the water down.”

“Down?”

“Out in the shell of the spacehab, where the microbes grow. If all the water comes up here, we’ll all drown.”

“The water needs more salt.”

“What do you mean?”

“If the water held more salt, people would float.” Float—like in Great Salt Lake. There was Aspie logic all right.

Mary was useless, but who else could Jenny tell? Her mother—what could her mother do; withdraw her from college? Her aunts; Aunt Meg would always have something sensible to say, but Jenny hated to call her. Professor Abaynesh? The professor was too unpredictable.

Jenny went to the toyroom, the eight-doored tree house. This time she posted Anouk’s code, the bit that would keep the mental away. She tapped the Jordi archive, and waited. No sign of the Monroe. A twinge of fear—she thrust it away. She picked “Poverty in Somers,” Jordi’s last and most famous Unity rally in Bailey Park.

The gazebo stood in the distance, half in shade, half in the blinding sun. The light dimmed a moment as a cloud passed, then was bright again. A crowd filled the park, larger than before. High school kids had climbed up into the trees, peering out through the kudzu. Jordi could barely be seen as the Somers town supervisor introduced him. Jenny blinked to zoom in. His face appeared, already beaded with sweat. That day had been blistering hot.

“‘The poor you will always have with you.’” One of his favorite lines. “I know you think young people don’t listen in church, but you see we do.” A few chuckles in the audience. “So today let’s talk about poverty. Poverty may sound like a surprising subject, for us in Somers. We all know—our real estate board boasts—how the poverty level in Somers is below half a percent.”

Jordi paused, a pause timed precisely, just long enough for the audience to start feeling uncomfortable. “How is that possible, that our poverty rate is so low, when our neighboring counties have poverty rates so high? In fact, some say we in Somers did years ago what Centrists would have us do today: Leave poverty behind.” He nodded. “The Centrists would have us leave poverty behind—leave the poor behind, in their poverty.”

A few boos from the audience, especially the kids in the trees. Few fans of Centrists were here.

“Kind of like the ‘Rapture,’ when all the ‘saved’ will be called to heaven, they say, leaving their shoes behind. Well, the Centrists would have us take off and leave our whole trashed planet behind. Bringing only our virtual memories, for a fortunate few in a spacehab.” The homes in waiting, down by the river,
todos se van
. “Spacehabs, for the fortunate few. How many of us will there ever be room for?”

Not many in Frontera; barely a village, Jenny thought. At night you could count the lights in Mount Gilead. Even with the latest tech, it took an Oklahoma-sized range of solarplate to build and sustain one spacehab. Or a space solarray—but those took years to build.

“Yet some say that we in Somers have already done the same thing. We left our own poor behind decades back. Behind zoning rules and ultraphyte patrols.” Jordi nodded. “Ultraphyte patrols are designed as much to keep out the poor and the homeless. And zoning—no one who can’t afford a million-dollar home need apply in Somers.”

In the audience a shoe scraped, a fan swished, cicadas hummed above the kudzu.

“But I see a greater Somers. I believe in the people of Somers. I believe in a Somers that can save our planet. That fights for clean energy and a future for all our citizens, for the next seven generations. That’s what Unity stands for…”

In the end, as the audience dissolved away, there stood Jordi alone in the gazebo. Alone, outside time, Father Clare had said. Yet Jordi never seemed to know it; he was always caught there, in that moment. “They took it well, didn’t they,” Jordi told her. “Better than I expected.”

“Of course, Jordi, you knew they would. Everyone knows you.”

He was shaking his head. “It just seems hopeless, sometimes. Everyone means well, and yet…” Wiping the sweat from his face, he looked tired. “What we’re up against.” Recollecting himself, he smiled. “That was a good line of yours, about the ultraphyte patrols.”

“Yeah, I know.” She’d seen it on call, how the ultraphyte patrol would pick up a homeless man and dump him in the next county. “Jordi, listen—Those spacehabs, they aren’t how they’re supposed to be.”

“I know.”

“Even Uncle Dylan’s spacehab. You know, the one he used to tell us about.”

Jordi grinned and pulled his hand through his hair. “Remember how Uncle Dylan used to let us drive the Lunar? How mad Mama got when she found out?”

“I know, but Jordi—if the spacehab lost power, it could flood any time.”

“Tell the squad. You’re in EMS, you always know the right people.”

That was true, although she hadn’t heard yet from the local service. She would ask Yola again.

“The speech went well,” Jordi reflected. “It will go even better next week, in Battery Park.”

Jenny pulled out. For a moment the toyroom went blank, little colored dots against white snow. Then the tree house with the eight doors. A mirage, a tree house that could flood any time and sweep her away, like Jordi in New York Harbor.

Her mind fell into a deep hole, the lowest she had fallen in months. A knife cutting, again and again; the only relief from that feeling. Summoning all her strength, as if swimming in slow motion, she made herself blink for the mental.

The Monroe did not appear right away. For a moment, Jenny panicked; had Anouk’s code banished the mental for good? Then at last the timeless face appeared, the sweeping eyelashes, the perfect cheeks. “Are you sure you need me, Jenny?” purred the Monroe. “You’ve been doing so well on your own.”

“It’s not me, it’s the spacehab. I just found out it could flood.”

“You’re right, Jenny. That’s not about you. You’re physically unsafe—and no one told you, did they.”

“That’s right.”

“So you’re right to feel upset,” the Monroe assured her. “And angry. Remember, feeling anger is normal.”

Jenny nodded. “I do feel angry.” Especially at Uncle Dylan—how could he have kept this from her? “But what can I do about it?”

“That’s for you to figure out—and you will. You can do it.” The Monroe added, “I’ll watch over you tonight. Remember, I’m here for you. You and nobody else but you.” She pouted and blew her a kiss.

There was one thing Jenny could do—she would not sleep on the ground floor again. She brought her sheets up to the greenhouse and turned off the mister in one corner. The Homefair build was the next morning; she set her toybox early. Above her stretched the orchids with their blossoms, purple and blood-red with the white star. I wish I could just be a plant, was her last thought before she fell asleep.

17

Saturday was the slanball team’s one day off, then a week to go till their first Sunday game. Jenny arrived early at Wickett Hall where volunteers gathered for Homefair. Above the window, the amyloid mallet flexed and pounded each colored peg through the hole, then turned the bench over and started again. Jenny had come up with several sound reasons for being there, besides seeing Tom. None of them changed the fact that she scarcely needed another distraction from work—five more neuro papers to read, plus a math tutorial; an entire book on the Northern Securities case; a toytour of Cuba, for her toyHarvard class; and for Hamilton, an essay on “Is man’s foremost aim to govern the
polis
?”

“ToyNews Mount Gilead.” The local ToyNews had finally found her box. “A dairy cow belonging to the Lazza family at Raccoon Run fell into a ditch and is just now being hauled out.” Three men with ropes were struggling to help a cow up a bank without fracturing her legs. Even a hundred-kilo mini-cow was quite something to handle. A real cow—Jenny hoped the cow’s milk would get to Ohioana. “The First Firmament Church announces a Tuesday evening seminar by an eminent baraminologist on the subject of ‘Heliocentrism: A Christian Response.’”

Father Clare emerged from a truck, wearing worn jeans and a blue T-shirt. Jenny realized she had never before seen him without the collar. A battered old convertible pulled up, its electric motor popping loudly. Out of the car jumped Fran and David, who opened a sign-up window in Jenny’s box. Others arrived in assorted ancient vehicles, or walked over from Huron, the scholarship frogs’ dorm. A scarlet sports car disgorged four Bulls in red shirts, including club president Fritz Hoffman, with dark marks around his eyes as if he’d had a long night. Priscilla Cho she recognized from Hamilton’s class; then Charlie; and at last Tom.

Jenny smiled, her pulse quickening. But for some reason Tom turned away, as if he thought she didn’t belong here. Puzzled, and feeling silly, she looked the other way, as if she just happened to show up.

David surveyed the crowd, over two dozen in all. “
Guao,
what a turnout. Okay, everyone, pile in somewhere. Follow Father Clare’s truck out Raccoon Run to the build site, twenty-six and a half Methuselah Lane.”

Jenny got in the back of David’s car, holding her ears from the noise. The cars trundled off slowly, with students hanging out the sides. Ahead, the truck turned west off Buckeye Trail. The cars lurched down a dirt road along a stream, while the college rolled upward behind them, until Jenny could just make out Wickett Hall and the parapets of Castle Cockaigne hanging down from the “sky.” Always solid overhead—no wonder children raised here could so easily believe outer space was a “firmament.”

Along the stream rolled fields of wheat and soy, dotted with red farmhouses. In a pasture grazed mini-cows, thick power bands encircling each leg. The cars turned again onto Methuselah Lane. The students piled out at the build site, a concrete slab about the size of Jenny’s family room back home. From the truck David was distributing hard hats, while Fran introduced the future homeowner, Sherri-Lyn Robins, a mother of three from West Virginia. “Sherri-Lyn was sponsored by Homefair to settle her family here. Last year, she put in a hundred hours on the Tharp home. This year, it’s her turn.” Fran raised Sherri-Lyn’s hand. The upperclass students cheered; the group seemed to know each other well. “We always take donations. Thanks to the First Reconciled Church for materials, and to First Firmament for providing today’s lunch.”

Father Clare held out his hands to clasp. Everyone gathered in a circle for the opening prayer. “Almighty God, our heavenly Father and Mother, we ask your blessing to build the Robins family home, for ‘unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain.’ Open our hearts, and bless our foundation. Let us be like the wise man who heard your word and built his house upon rock. Above all, guide us to build safely and to build a safe dwelling, here on this hollow rock amongst the stars. In the name of Jesus your son and Mary our mother, let us all dwell in your heavenly mansions forever. Amen.”

Jenny nodded at his mention of the stars.

Out of the truck came hard hats, aprons full of nails, and wall frame sections of gray carboxyplast, numbered to fit tabs on the slab. While Fran and Fritz hauled out the sections, David lectured on safety. Hard hats, hammers, how to climb a ladder—it was a lot for everyone to remember.

“Why no floating tools?” Jenny rarely used her hands.

“Floating tools consume too much power,” said Fran. “Homefair builds on sweat.”

The juniors and seniors seemed to know what to do, dividing into groups, each group assigned to a wall section. The first gray frame of carboxyplast went up quickly, posts buttressed with a long plank at an angle out from the slab. Jenny’s group raised a section at a corner. Tentatively she positioned a nail in the middle of the corner. The first blow of her hammer went thud on the carb, three inches past the nail. Embarrassed, Jenny was aware of Sherri-Lyn Robins working next to her, and one of her small children watching from off-site, finger in his mouth.

“Hold the hammer close, at first,” advised Sherri-Lyn. “Get used to where it hits.”

“It’s my first time,” Jenny admitted.

“It took me a week to hit the first nail.”

Jenny glanced sideways at Tom. He was driving special long nails through the base plate right into the slab; a tap for each one, and the whole wall was done. He said he hadn’t built houses, but he sure knew a thing or two.

Before long the entire home was framed in. The posts and crossbeams and diagonal braces traced open spaces all around, making pretty shapes against the rolling land. If the braces held stained glass, they’d make a cathedral. A house was born “all windows,” she realized, until all but a few got boarded in.

The wall boards were a different kind of carb with a lighter, porous texture. They went up fast with a volley of nails. One board covered a door, so David had to saw out a piece. Then a spider bot went up the walls, crawling over every board to check for hidden flaws.

David dropped his hammer. “Walls are done,” he called. “The bot will report back after lunch. With luck, we’ll put up the roof.”

Everyone cheered, as much for lunch as for the walls. The morning had gone fast. Jenny found herself wondering if there wasn’t some other way, like couldn’t they just print out whole homes in carb?

Lunch was not printout; it was prepared and served by two ladies from the Mount Gilead First Firmament Church. Each woman wore a long pioneer dress with a round bonnet, arms power-banded. Jenny tried not to stare, horrified yet fascinated to see ordinary people who really believed the stars were pasted on the sky. The younger one smiled and said hello to everyone. Her companion, Leora Smythe, about the age of Jenny’s mother, was more reserved. A pauline, Jenny thought, knowing the look. At any rate, she was grateful enough for the sandwich. Real bread and fresh cheese from Raccoon Run cows were a treat. As she left the table, she turned. Beneath her bonnet, Leora was watching her.